Title: YELLing for collaborative learning in teacher education: users' voices in the social platform LearnWeb2.0

Authors: Maria Bortoluzzi; Ivana Marenzi

Addresses: Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Udine, Via Mantica, 3, 33100 Udine, Italy ' L3S Research Center, Leibniz University of Hanover, Appelstr. 9a, 30167 Hanover, Germany

Abstract: The community platform Young English Language Learners and Teen English Language Learners (YELL/TELL) was developed to respond to the needs of collaboration and sharing among trainee teachers, school teachers, teacher trainers and researchers in the field of language learning for English as second language (L2) and English as foreign language (EFL). The social community YELL/TELL, supported by the LearnWeb2.0 platform, has the aim to encourage professional collaboration among trainees, teachers of different schools and teacher educators in pre-service and in-service training. Lifelong learning is promoted on the basis of sharing resources, commenting and reflecting on them in the spirit of open educational practices and free resources, offering support, ideas, and competences for teaching English as L2. Within the framework of reflective socio-constructivism and multiliteracies, this paper discusses the YELL case study as a peer-training and open professional community.

Keywords: social platforms; social communities; YELL/TELL; LearnWeb2.0; social searching; resource sharing; peer-teacher education; Open Educational Resources; OER; co-constructed knowledge; teacher training; collaboration; multiliteracies; lifelong learning; English language; language learning; online communities; web based communities; virtual communities.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSMILE.2014.063402

International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments, 2014 Vol.2 No.2, pp.182 - 198

Received: 01 Aug 2013
Accepted: 23 Dec 2013

Published online: 30 Jul 2014 *

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