One way of working with Web 2.0

I'm starting to upload things to the wiki, and the process is forcing me to think about things a bit more deeply. What I'm finding is that the most useful way of approaching a lot of Web 2.0 tools is if you first think of a genre you want to create something for - e.g. a newspaper story, a biography, or a film review; and then choose tools which can bring a slightly different perspective to them.

I find this a really good way of working because it makes me see the tools I'm using in a different way. Using xtranormal to create a film review is a good example of this. Rather than just being two people having a conversation, I turned the whole thing into a TV-show style film review, with one character interviewing the other.

I think this is also a good way to work in the classroom. One thing might find myself battling against is the students' desire to just play around with the tools and create loads of random stuff. I need to make sure there are opportunities for them to learn about more than just using Web 2.0 tools; and I think learning about discourse is the way to go. If we select one genre per week, we can do classroom based stuff looking at how texts are ararnged and features of their cohesion ; and then the students can cut loose a bit and make some sort of presentation, hopefully incorporating what they've learned.

This newspaper article is an example. The written article includes features of that genre, like the use of the passive, the quotations fleshing out the story, the lexical variation on the theme of the master and the apprentice, etc. And then, at the end, there's the Web 2.0 bit - a cartoon strip illustrating the whole thing, which hopefully brings it to life a bit more and engages the students' creativity!

What do you think of this way of working? Aside from focusing on discourse, can you help me think of any other approaches I can take? With the above approach, the syllabus is a mixture of discourse- and task-based designs. Do you think it might be possible to use vocabulary- or grammar-centered approaches to syllabus design together with Web 2.0? Click "comments" below if you have an opinion you'd like to share!