A Preview for Using

Google Wave

in theLanguage Classroom

WHAT IS WAVE?

Wave is…

Wikipedia: “a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking. It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus supported by extensions…”(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave)

Google: “a personal communication and collaboration tool that makes real-time interactions more seamless…”(source: http://www.google.com/support/wave/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=162898)

Gina Trapani (wrote a book about Wave): “multimedia wikichat”(source: interview, http://smarterware.org/4475/frequently-asked-questions-about-google-wave)

• At the center: “waves”

• What’s a wave? (Not Wave, but wave)

– Server-hosted xml document• Synchronous and asynchronous capabilities• Merges text, audio/video media, attachments, gadgets, & more• Still to come: spreadsheets, presentations, other “office” docs• Will take many different shapes: image, video, audio files, etc.• Waves are, in turn, embeddable (e.g., blogs)

Wave is…

Let’s take a look.

Overview of Layout

Folders Panel

Contacts Panel

Folder Contents Panel

Wave Panel

WHY WAVE?

Advantages for the L2 classroom

• Open platform– OS independent (Mac/PC)– Many users from any

location can collaborate– Think Google Docs

• Accessibility– Many people already have

Google accounts– Target language speakers

• Beyond UIC– Waves persist privately or

publicly

• Truly multilingual– Not just Latin alphabets

• Unicode repetoire: L2R, R2L, Syllabaries, Abjads, Abugidas, Logograms

• IME-dependent languages

• Playback feature– Easily review student

contributions– Think accountability

… but more importantly

Ease of Collaboration

Advantages for the L2 classroom

A couple of issues

• Technology in infancy– Missing some basic,

useful features– Some extensions (gadgets

& bots) difficult to use– Wave isn’t an established

medium like e-mail

• Privacy à la Google– Many folks have legitimate

concerns– Work-arounds exist

• Truly multilingual– NLP & Translation (more later)

• New communication model + expanding versatility = learning curve– UI underrepresents capacity– Waves will be able to become

any kind of ‘document’

• Potential Messiness– 1 line ÷ 1 blip = bad– More than e-mail or chat

Wave Clutter

WAVE HOW & WHEN?

What you’ll need to get started

• Eventually, Wave account incorporated in Google account, but until then…

• An invitation

• Sporty computer

• Some practice

Projects made easy with Wave

• Richer wikis

• Interactive trip itineraries

• Target language multimedia “chats”

• Group brainstorming

• Hold audio & video conferences

• Learner-generated, cumulative note-taking

And each project could be reviewed/edited by a native speaker of a target language.

Let’s take a closer look.

Wiki in Wave

Wiki in Wave

Itinerary in Wave

Itinerary in Wave

Student Note-taking in Wave

Student Note-taking in Wave

Structure

Specific concerns for language instructors

• Translation bots

• Participant hierarchy … or lack thereof

• Again, 1 line ÷ 1 blip = bad

For more information, contact:

L. D. Nicholas MayLmay4@uic.edu

Thank you!

created by L. D. Nicholas May