Effective+Communication

=**Effective Communication (UNDER CONSTRUCTION)**=



In today’s connected world, effective communication requires literacy in Web 2.0 skills.

Effective communication what results from strong skills in speaking and listening, reading and writing. In our world of ever-increasing networking, many students communicate with each other daily using all of these four skills, with a definite bent towards written communication. FaceBook, MySpace, blogs, Twitter: all of these tools and so many more are free and accessible to students.

Teachers can help students to extend their skills beyond social networking to build communication skills they’ll need for the workplace. There are a wide variety of Web 2.0 tools available to teachers and students. Being Web 2.0, all of these are collaborative and make use of student reading and writing, speaking and listening skills. While some tools (for example, Google Docs) make use of reading and writing skills only, others (for example YouTube) make use of speaking and listening skills, often in combination with reading and writing skills. It should be noted at this point that teaching grammar and vocabulary, reading and writing skills, etc., is not a focus of Web 2.0 tools. These tools provide the showcase for students to demonstrate their products, but do not in themselves help to improve communication skills. This is still the job of the skilled teacher, who uses the classroom as a place to build literacy skills and the web to show the results.

Having an audience helps to motivate students (and teachers!). Knowing that their peers, as well as a potentially global audience, will be seeing their work creates a need for a quality product, and students work hard on their productions. It’s up to teachers to help students to develop the communication skills they need, and to support and guide students in their first web productions.

To build effective communication skills students must learn to:

* Communicate using digital media and environments to support personal and group learning.

* Share information efficiently and effectively using appropriate digital media and environments.

* Communicate thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively to different audiences using various media and formats. [[]]


 * Ideas for Educators
 * A simple list of ideas about how educators can promote the topic in their classroom
 * Shall we say at least 10 practical ideas?


 * Reading & Videos (Case Studies)
 * Several readings and videos that demonstrate practical application of the topic


 * Tools for topic
 * What are the actual technology tools that can be used to achieve the topic (e.g. Skype, Blogger, Google Maps, Ning, etc.)?
 * Brief statement about the tool and what it is good for


 * Sample lesson/unit plans
 * You don't have to create these, you could find them from other sources like Curriki.org.
 * You could include a lesson plan that you have created.


 * Additional resources & links
 * Anything else that you want to share on the topic

==Navigation ( We can leave this on the bottom of every page so that people can jump around )==
 * Home
 * About the Authors (everyone add your own - we'll put them alphabetically by the first letter of your first name)
 * Introduction (Blue group)
 * Core Academic Knowledge (Blue group)
 * Critical/Divergent Thinking (Red group)
 * Complex Problem Solving (Red group)
 * Effective Communication (Orange group)
 * Working in Collaboration (Orange group)
 * Learning how to Learn (Green group)
 * Global Perspective (Yellow group)
 * Real World Application (Yellow group)
 * Video tutorial or Teacher Quick Start Guide (Green group)