At the TESOL Arabia 2008 Conference to be held at Dubai Men's College, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on March 13-15, 2008 I present on: Writingmatrix: Engaging collaborative writing through social networking - Abstract: This presentation explains aggregation, tagging, and RSS with respect to filtering content online and describes how these were applied in a worldwide collaboration project involving student bloggers tagging their posts writingmatrix and then using Technorati and Del.icio.us to identify each other's posts and explore mutual interests through social bookmarking. The session is listed at 3:30 Friday March 14 on this document: http://tesolarabia.org/conference/schedule.php

1. Writingmatrix: Engaging collaborative writing through social networking Presented March 4, 2008 at theTESOL Arabia 2008 Conference Dubai Men's College, Dubai, United Arab Emirates By Vance Stevens Lecturer of Computing, Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, http://adVancEducation.blogspot.com / [email_address]

2. How you can find this presentation VanceStevens.com is down right now but you can Google “Vance Stevens” I’ll post the slideshare and handout links at http://writingmatrix.wikispaces.com Or you can Google Writingmatrix

3. Becoming Multiliterate Requires changing Attitudes Practices in education How we join the “conversation” (some examples) Twitter http://twitter.com or Pownce http://pownce.com Worldbridges http://www.worldbridges.net/ Webheads http://webheads.info My course on multiliteracies: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesol/ppot/portal2007.htm

4. Ten aspects of paradigm shift Pedagogy : Didactic --> constructivist Modeling : Do as I say --> AND as I do Sharing : Copyrighted --> creative commons Trepidation : Will they find out? --> ok to say I don’t know Literacy : Print literacy --> multiliteracies Heuristics : Client server -->peer to peer Transfer : Informal technology is F.U.N. --> applied to professional practice Directionality : Push --> pull Ownership : Proprietary --> open source Classification : Taxonomies --> folksonomies Here, I first suggested multiple aspects of paradigm shift required http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/2007alexandria/web20arabia.htm

5. Classification: Taxonomies  Folksonomies

6. Content management vs. overload Keys to collaboration and control of information resources online Syndication - understanding of RSS Aggregation - add to above, understanding of tagging Mashup - Putting it together in reusable learning objects This presentation Explains these concepts in terms accessible to educators Describes how the concepts were applied in Writingmatrix: a worldwide collaboration project

7. Syndication --> Aggregation --> Mashup blogs listservs podcasts online journals online newsfeeds Technorati searches RSS feeds generated by

8. Syndication --> Aggregation --> Mashup Bloglines or Google Reader Pageflakes and any of these can be subscribed to in

9. Syndication --> Aggregation --> Mashup Moodle blocks Embedded videos in blogs http://advanceducation.blogspot.com/2007/10/vances-first-video-production-teaser.html Pageflakes http://www.pageflakes.com/vancestevens/13498617 Netvibes http://www.netvibes.com/webdesk

10. Writingmatrix: Introduction Initially involved bloggers in Argentina Venezuela Slovenia Who utilized tagging social networking tools to enable the students to locate each other's blogs interact with selected individuals thus identified as being of similar age and interests. http://writingmatrix.wikispaces.com

11. Writingmatrix: Technique To achieve this, Students are encouraged to blog their interests and concerns tag relevant posts with an identifier unique to the project Technorati then used to identify the posts of participants in other countries http://technorati.com/search/writingmatrix?authority=n&language=en http://screencast.com/t/M33ixayEN2J

12. Writingmatrix: Outcomes Students are motivated to form writing partnerships Spontaneously without prior collaboration in projects set by teachers collaborating in the project A final aspect of the project is to have students explore areas of mutual interest through tagging some of their and each other's posts in Del.icio.us, then discern who else is reading and tagging their posts

13. It works! Ronaldo’s comment on http://advanceducation.blogspot.com/2008/02/all-i-know-about-blogging-and.html