The Web 2.0 is providing new ways to create content, collaborate, and participate in wide-reaching discussions. For a graduate course in building such interactive services, I have used these recent technological advances to give students exposure to what they are to design. I will briefly describe some technologies that I have used from Web 2.0 type of applications. The first is Twitter which I use to carry classroom discussions outside of email and outside of classroom boundaries (physical and electronic). I also use DropBox as a way to share documents with students in groups. I have also used podcasts, Google Docs, Google Calendar, SlideShare, CiteULike, Delicious, and LinkedIn for other purposes related to my teaching/research.

1. Using Web 2.0
Infrastructure to Improve
Classroom Communication
Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones
perez@cs.vt.edu • http://perez.cs.vt.edu
Department of Computer Science
Center for Human-Computer Interaction
Virginia Tech

2. Dropbox
• •
Store and share documents Suggested (but not done) to
online just have a folder for class,
drop materials there, gets
• copied to students
Software syncs your online and
automatically
computer files
•
• Free software, limit of 2GB;
Share folders transparently
paid option for more storage
• To write papers with my
students, we just share a
Dropbox folder
2

3. Twitter.com
• •
Micro blogging platform Has been used in courses to
support “contextualized”
• teaching (teaching in the
Status (what are you doing)
moment)
service
•
• I use it to post announcements
Inform your friends, be
and updates to course
informed about their status
materials, and to interact with
• students in short bursts
“Follow” friends, famous
people, or single words
• Follow me: mapq
• Updates can be received via
email, SMS (to your phone),
desktop client, etc.
3

4. “The class twitter account served as a nice
platform for the class participants to built rapport
and exchange thoughts and ideas. On a personal
note, […] whenever I wanted a clarification, I just
sent him a private message on Twitter and got
back a quick reply.”
4

5. “CS5774 made me re-evaluate my view of the
importance of Web 2.0 technologies. The quot;Web 2.0quot;
label had been attached to so many concepts that it
had lost much of its meaning for me. This class
helped me see the underlying social nature of these
concepts and how they can be deployed in
meaningful ways to enhance systems which might
not normally be considered quot;socialquot; software
systems.”
5

6. “I found the incorporation of easy to use software like
Moodle, Twitter, email list serve and video podcasts
invaluable in providing appropriate context and
information to me outside of the class. Thanks to the
use of these technologies, I could come prepared to
class about the topic that was going to be taught and
since I wasn't distracted by having to write notes in
class, I could devote all my attention to the
conversations transpiring in class. […] Being a full time
professional with several responsibilities outside of
class, I found having this quot;contextquot; available literally at
my fingertips at all times very useful.”
6

9. Other systems
• Identify friends (facebook, orkut, friendster)
• Education (citeulike, campusbug, carmun,
koofers, rateteachers)
• Share resources: movies (youtube),
pictures (flickr), status (twitter),
bookmarks (del.icio.us, stumbleupon),
news (digg, reddit), citations (citeulike),
exams (koofers), slides (slideshare)...
9

10. citeulike.org
• •
Bookmarking for references, Create a “group” with your
with support to export to students and share references
EndNote, bibtex, etc.
• Supports “bookmarking” from
popular cites, including ACM
DL
• Power of social browsing,
recommendations
10