Week four of my Spanish conversation class has just finished. I am teaching 2X a week vs 3X a week…my hope was that we would have more time on task if we met for an hour and 15 minutes (vs 3X a week @ 50 minutes). The class meets at night. I am still not sure how I feel about the night class aspect of it…I know some of my students are as tired as I am if not more so at 7:15 p.m. And of course I have already work a whole day in our language center, go home, fix dinner, and then whip back to work again. The jury is still out as to whether this is the optimal schedule or not.
The students, however, as always, are wonderful. Many different nationalities, ages, and interests. They have begun blogging and are becoming a bit more comfortable with the tools as well as the premise (and the promise??) behind using these tools. The blog is their portfolio..an example of what they have done and what they have thought about what they have done this far. At the midterm point they will be asked to pick out some artifacts from their blog/portfolio and explain how these things shows growth or progress towards their goals for this class. More on that later…
Feel free to click here to take a look at their work, add a comment, etc.
The purpose of this class is to prepare the students to live, work, travel in “el exterior,” or in a Spanish speaking country. They have 4 semesters of college-level Spanish under their belts (or the equivalent) and now they want to do something with it.
In class, we are tackling some big things. We saw the movie “Secuestro Express” and have been trying to come to grips with the fact that this unpleasant and quite violent reality (there have been over 1500 kidnappings in Venezuela since 1999) is not something we hear about when we hear about Venezuela in the news. Our media tends to fixate on Hugo Chavez and his friendship with Fidel, or when he calls our president unattractive names. There is a disconnect between what is going on and what our media sources are reporting.
Thanks to the wonders of technology we brought in Dafne from Caracas via Skype. It is one thing to watch a movie about kidnappings and urban violence… it is quite another to speak with someone who has experienced them personally (Dafne’s own sister was kidnapped and has suffered lasting psychological trauma as a result).
But how does one, as a non-native speaker of Spanish, enter into these conversations with native speakers about potentially painful and upsetting events with people we do not know well (or at all)? Is it possible? How do you move from a list of questions that need answers to seamless conversation in a second language? Can there be a give and a take in a conversation where the native speaker is just so excited that someone is actually expressing an interest in his/her world and its reality that you sometimes cannot get a word in edgewise? How do you find a place in a conversation to stop someone and say, um, could you repeat what you have been saying um because I have no idea what you have been saying for the last 10 minutes??
After we listened to/spoke with Dafne via Skype, I invited a real live speaker from Venezuela to come to class and entertain questions. The students asked really wonderful, sincere questions. But it was so hard…linguistically and intellectually. I felt for them, really, because I remember that moment in my educational experience when I suddenly realized that the world was no longer just black and white…rather, there were many many many shades and textures of gray out there.
In the interest of making sure that all sides of the story were available to my students, I gave them a link to an interview a student of mine did for our class 2 years ago…a Skype chat with someone who was markedly pro-Chavez. Definitely food for thought…and hooray for past years’ blogs helping the current students build on previous (archived) knowledge!
It is quite hard to formulate the questions, listen for the responses, and then ask follow up questions based upon the responses in a second language. But this group is getting there, and I am proud of their struggles thus far.
And hooray for one of my students who is going to a presentation being made by one of Obama’s people on his foreign policy plans on campus tomorrow. Her comment? “I know the presentation is about the Middle East, but I want to know what Obama knows about Venezuela.”
I love it when what they learn within the classroom helps to enrich what and how they learn outside of the classroom.
Two Steps to Take
Published in the Korea Times, Feb. 28, 2008
Letter to the Editor
Dear editor,
I'm writing in response to a Feb. 25 Korea Times article, "English Education Needs to Start at Earlier Ages".
Prof. Ahn Young-sop is 100 percent correct when he points out that the overemphasis on testing is hurting English language education in Korea. The situation is the same worldwide, and the only ones who profit are companies that produce the tests and test-preparation materials.
His suggestion of expanding the use of English in media also makes sense. Research in language
acquisition tells us that we acquire language when we understand what we hear and what we read, and media can provide a great deal of "comprehensible input".
Studies done over the last decade, largely in Asia, confirm that wide self-selected recreational reading has a powerful effect on English language development for students of English as a foreign language, and those who establish a reading habit in English will continue to improve as long as they keep reading.
Prof. Cho Kyung-sook of the Busan National University of Education has been an important contributor to this research. The obvious step to take is to vastly improve English collections in public libraries and school libraries.
Another obvious step to take is to increase the amount of English aural input. Fortunately, this can be done for free, through http://www.eslpod.com, which provides a wide variety of listening experiences for intermediate students of English as a foreign language.
Increasing written and aural input will be far more effective and far less expensive than other paths, such as the establishment of English villages, starting English very early, and hiring more foreign teachers.
Stephen Krashen,
Professor emeritus
University of Southern California
Congratulations!
just a couple of mistakes in the speech, can you spot them?
thank you so much.
Olivier, what are you did to me
maestro Olivier Darant
you rocked my life
you truly rocked my life
Thank you so much to picture house for your passion
members of the academy thank you so so much
and well, well , I'm speechless now
I, I
thank you life
thank you love
it is true that there is some angels in this city
thank you so, so much
Educational Games in Second Life - 29th Feb (12.30-13.30 PST)
Join us for the third monthly session of Education@EduNation on Friday February 29th from 12:30 - 13:30 PST for a special session on educational games in Second Life with Jeremy Koester (Jeremy Braver in SL)
Here's Jeremy's biodata:
I am first of all an educator. My heart is to work with learners in interactive learning environments. I am the Founder and President of Gaming and Learning in Second Life. I consult with educational entities regarding learning and technology. I am currently working on my graduate degree in Instructional Technology at the University of Texas at San Antonio (ant. '08). Gaming and learning is a passionate interest of mine. I regularly present my educational technology findings at large conventions such as SLBPE, SLCC, TCEA and CAMT. I want to be a part in shaping the future of education and how America addresses it's educational needs going into this digital, global environment.
I will be talking about Gaming and Learning in SL as an organization. Participants will learn about what GaLiSL is, what we do, and also get a chance to play a game that Jeremy Braver (Jeremy Koester-RL) designed. The game is called 'Windbag'. It's a whimsical game of social bluffing where everyone has a good laugh and learns at the same time.
Be sure to sign up beforehand at Edunation III
(Just live-blogging notes)
I am attending -well, sort of- Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation. These are some side-reflections while at the conference. These notes are personal and not necessarily tuned to the session content.
The first session is by Ben Wilkoff and he starts off by asking how to create context for students online. A context where they can express just-in-time reflections.
Probably because I am not a native speaker of English I find it hard to fully understand some audience members when they are not that close to a mike. But this is just a digression. What amazes me now is to what extent my own expectations of a context have changed. I do not feel anxious that I cannot fully understand everything being said, or take perfect notes, which I know I wasn't before. I do not even worry that I may have to cut a session short and go out before the shops close here in Buenos Aires.
Actually the meaning of attending has changed once we have shifted to an online environment. There is a wiki to gather every distributed venue for the events and to archive chats. I do not regard it as a place to recover everything I may have missed. The wiki is just a spot I will go to for reference, for the missing links to take my thoughts further.
Unless I blog about the conference and publish my thoughts -i.e open my mind to speak with others- what is the purpose of attending online events? For some, certificates of attendance would do. They make sense to many people. For me, I think the way of assessing my own learning would be to track the conversation generated by this post. Mind you, not the hits in Statcounter, but the thoughts triggered as from these.
So what is my conference context?
A tweet pulling me in
 | budtheteacher Started. It's on. http://colearning.wikispace... |
Another tweet guiding me within
 | dwarlick In case anyone else is online, there's a Learning 2.0 conference going on in Colorado, Ustreamed at: http://tinyurl.com/2l2zee |
 | bhwilkoff Live Blogging Learning 2.0: http://tinyurl.com/2qsj9j |
A chatroom with people I know (online only) and people I first meet or hear of. Yet, we have things in common: we are sharers and learners, perhaps, the voracious kind of reader who would spend part of their weekend on this event. Take that for likemindedness enough to lead to some success learning wise.
The wiki has a short and clear intro to the purpose of the event as well as several links on the side bar. Yet I chose to start my way in by a tweet. Why? Maybe I felt it was more real than reading a static guide. It was just-in-time.
Ben rounds up,
"How do we make our classroom more authentic?"
Perhaps not showcase this connectedness, but model and drag them into the conversation just-in-time.
And now -towards the end of the first session- I go on to read the post that started it all. I do not feel this is late to read it. Just-in-time. My learning time.
In an earlier contribution to this blog (7 November 2007) I wrote about setting up EUROCALL's new HQ in Second Life. I shall be giving a presentation about the HQ in Second Life at the CMC SIG conference - from a distance (i.e. in the UK). It's nothing spectacular - just a tour of the HQ, which is located on EduNation III island in Second Life. The HQ can be used for real-time meetings and presentations to small groups, e.g. PowerPoint and video presentations and slide shows. Here is the EUROCALL HQ SLURL:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/EduNation%20III/9/29/22/
You may find me lurking there sometimes in the guise of Groovy Winkler.
David Richardson and his colleagues will be giving a presentation at the conference entitled "Practicing proficiency in virtual space - a case study of cross-cultural collaboration in language learning", which will also be delivered at a distance (from Sweden) using Second Life. David has posted messages concerning his Kamino Island project, which focuses on oral production, in the EUROCALL CMC SIG discussion list at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CMC_SIG/
You can read more about David's oral production project at:
http://www.humsam.hik.se/distans/existstud/op/index.htm
Further information on the Padua conference can be found in the CMC SIG discussion list (above). The main contact person in Padua is Francesca Helm. Contact her via the discussion list.
Participating in conferences at a distance is now established practice. The Consultants-E, a business based in Barcelona, manage the EduNation islands in Second Life, where they are running a series of seminars entitled EduCation@EduNation:
http://www.theconsultants-e.com/edunation/edunation.asp
We focus on Second Life in Section 14.2.1 of Module 1.5 at the ICT4LT website:
http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod1-5.htm#secondlife
EUROCALL has incorporated a virtual strand into its last two conferences, 2006 and 2007. The archives are here:
EUROCALL 2006 blog:
http://eurocall2006blog.blogspot.com/
EUROCALL 2007 virtual strand, which includes streamed videos of the keynotes:
http://vsportal2007.googlepages.com/
EUROCALL 2008 in Hungary will also include a virtual strand - details to be announced later:
http://www.asszisztencia.hu/eurocall/
Regards
Graham Davies
For those of you who cannot read German, here's a brief summary: A couple in Germany, Marion and Folkert Knieper, have put together an online cookbook with lots of photos taken by Folkert Knieper, e.g. the sort of photos of food that teachers like to use in their worksheets, blogs and online worksheets. The online cookbook includes a lexicon and has lots of links to other sites - which puts it high on Google's hit list if you are doing a search. So you search (in German) for an image of tomatoes, carrots, a cup of tea, etc. You find the image in the cookbook and add it to your website, blog, or online worksheet. Now here's the catch. Folkert Knieper uses the image search facility in Google to find his own photos. Bingo! The photo that you have added to your website turns up. He then asks you to pay for it and takes you to court for breach of copyright if you refuse. In Germany the law on copyright is much the same as it is in the UK. If you take a photograph and publish it on the Web you automatically own copyright in the photo unless stated otherwise. Apparently, Folkert Knieper is making hundreds of thousands of euros out of this venture. Nice little earner, eh? It could catch on...
Selling digital photos is a growing business these days:
http://www.cameradollars.com/?hop=linguaglot
[cross-posted on tech-o tuesday]
If you haven’t heard of the 1962 book that predicts (or, tries to predict) what technology will look like thirteen short years from the date of publication, please check out the Flickr photoset recently posted by Derrick Bostrom. I’m most frightened interested by the obsession with punch-card systems for language translation, making exact replicas of documents, and testing student knowledge, but the thought of irradiated beans doesn’t sit well with me, either. On the other hand, I might soon be blogging from the comfort of my own beach home:
Happy Friday, all, and have a great weekend!
[bostworld, via boingboing]
Ando soltando tareas, esperando un aire nuevo, preparándome para coger carrerilla con mis alumnos en cuanto llegue marzo. Me ocupo haciendo webquests que no puedo dejar aparcadas y aprendiendo sobre los egipcios y pompeya. Y la India.
Y con los alumnos estoy en la temporada Wiki, a ver qué resulta. Aunque peleo mucho con ellos les tengo mucho aprecio, lo que seguramente no será mutuo hasta que pasen unos años. Es un feeling diferente al que he podido tener los años atrás trabajando en la universidad. Mucho más cercano.
Y la música, por otro lado es lo que me mantiene ................
He estado pasando un buen rato leyendo (aunque en tiempo sólo un ratillo par relajar las neuronas entre dos tareas pesadas) el post de Daniel Primo (un fenómeno de Valladolid) sobre los mejores artículos de su blog en el último año y me he parado en toda la música.
Y en especial en este video, puede que no sea lo mejor pero están 4 de los que más me gustan: Bunbury, Calamaro, Jaime Urrutia y Loquillo, en ese orden. Son nostalgias.
Y ahora los nuevos aires.
Sí todo en Spanish.
UNA, DOS Y TRES
Una, 2 y 3, volver a empezar,
la vida va pasando y todo sigue igual,
que importa lo que pudo ser y no será,
yo sigo aqui tranquilo cantando al compas, arriba los de siempre juegos del poder, mentiras que ya suenan como las de ayer y en medio de este ruido y esta tempestad, busco una verdad.
Una, 2 y 3, volver a empezar,
la vida va pasando y todo sigue igual,
a veces estas lejos otra mas alla y el tiempo va pasando y todo sigue igual, despues de subir alto y volver a caer, despues de tanta noche y tanto amanecer y en medio de este ruido y esta tempestad....busco una verdad.
y el reloj no se parará por ti, pasa el mundo y el dolor, solo contigo y sin ti.
sale el sol cada mañana es abril, no te olvides del amor, no dejes de sonreir.
.................................................
I am a visual thinker. I don’t do code. And yes, even though I teach languages words can escape me (oh what I could tell you about the number of things in our office that I have called “thing-a-ma-bob”)
However, what I can tell you what I would like the tools to do and have no qualms asking questions that begin with “Okay, so, on my class’ blog, would it be possible …” I believe I have asked this question enough in the past two or so years (and certainly o’er the last month or so) that Ryan has developed a slight nervous tick when I approach his office doorway. And this sign.
(Side note, I am continually reminded of how difficult this can be for some of our faculty, that is, the abililty to articulate what is missing from your class / what you would like the technology to do to enrich your class content vs jumping into the technology and hoping for the best… more on this later)
The above image is the whiteboard where I tried to “articulate” what it was that I was hoping to do via my class’ blog. Tag clouds, blog rolls, rotating images in the headers (ala Jim Groom… we < heart > Jim Groom) …yup its all there… somewhere.
And then there is the writing of the syllabus. Ick… I find the practice of creating a syllabus so constricting, so limiting. And, as indicated below…so messy.
I was reviewing my plans for the semester with a colleague and he shared with me this wonderful article entitled “Death to the Syllabus” written by Mano Singham of Case Western Reserve University as published in Liberal Education in Fall 2007. I have shared this with my students and await their response. It describes my frustration with the overplanned, micromanaged syllabi that we find ourselves creating… and then regretting because we have locked ourselves into an exhausting whirlygig of tasks.
Have a read and let me know what you think…
Oh and if you would like to see what “el blog central” for my class is starting to look like, please take a look here …and check back often!
Someone wrote early in the week asking what they should blog about. My reply seemed to be appreciated by the group, so I thought I'd blog it and tag it in such a way that it would fit in with the experiments the group is conducting on the Writingmatrix model, finding posts created as part of a group by tagging them, in this case b4echallenge, and then finding the posts by searching on the common tag in Technorati.
On the purpose of blogging
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blogging4educators/message/445
Ideally you should pick as a topic for your blog something that you would like to have an online conversation about. I've heard people (who don't know better) say things like "blogs are just online journals, aren't they?" This implies a one-way information transfer. If that's the case you might as well put up a static web page. Of course blog software can make it a lot EASIER for someone to put up a 'page' somewhere. But thinking of a blog in terms of unidirectional information flow misses the point considerably. A good blog will invite comments. If you turn 'trackback' on in your blog then you can see when other people are linking to you from their blogs. Appropriate use of TAGS (labels or categories in some blog software) will reveal your blog to people who search Technorati or Google Blog Search for blog posts on topics of interest to them.
So, true, the topic of your blog can be anything that interests YOU. But if you think of it in terms of Web 2.0, read-write, many-way conversation opportunities, then this might help you to direct your postings to things that are of interest to others as well.
This interest doesn't have to be popular. Blogs and other web 2.0 tools address the great need lacking in conventional publishing for vehicles for communication on niche issues, what has been called the 'long tail'. It may turn out that what interests you might be of great interest to someone else. A blog is a good way to find that other person, other people, and discover and communicate with a small but dedicated group.
There's more about trackback and pingback in section 4.1 here:
Dieu, Barbara, and Vance Stevens. (2007), Pedagogical affordances of syndication, aggregation, and mash-up of content on the Web. TESL-EJ, Volume 11, Number 1: http://tesl-ej.org/ej41/int.html
On tagging:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blogging4educators/message/625
Tags are a concept it took me a while to get my mind around, and some have asked 'how do I do it?'. At the bottom of your blog post you'll see a field where you can write in tags for your post. In some blog softwares these are called LABELS or CATEGORIES. Essentially you're meant to write in a few words (or strings in computerese) there that best describe your post.
After a while you'll find that a lot of the words you use repeat themselves in such a way that they develop a classification system, and in aggregate with millions of other people doing the same thing your classification system forms a 'folksonomy' (a word similar to taxonomy, which is a pre-ordained classification system).
Powerful tools have been developed to feret out tags from among the millions of posts created in the blogosphere. We use Technorati but there are 12 more tools listed here: http://mashable.com/2008/02/03/13-tools-for-tracking-discussions-in-the-blogosphere/
We have found that by using a tag unique to a project we can 'aggregate content' (or 'find all the posts on the topic'). This can be used in classrooms as with the writingmatrix project.
You should definitely label, tag, or categorize your posts. This is very important. You can have as many labels as you like except where blogger, for example, limits you to 200 characters. In any event, you should tag ALL posts you create in conjunction with this post by the tag (label or category). Tags are essential, key, to the social nature of blogging. You will see how it works if you start tagging your posts right away.
Pay attention to how to delimit your tags. In blogger you delimit with a comma. This means your tags can be more than one word. But many sites have you delimit with a space (so tags are one word, or one_word like this - if you space delimit in blogger you will end up with one long tag, but you can go back and fix it, don't worry).
Also, you should ensure that your blog is public (unless you want it to be private). In Blogger you go to settings to make your blog public. If it's public it can be found by tag search engines such at http://technorati.com - if it's not public it won't show up on the searches we do.
On Writingmatrix
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blogging4educators/message/719
This week I'll be talking about the Writingmatrix project, which you can read about here:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dr22kn2_24dpqdgg . At that link, there are links to many recorded presentations and publications already made about this project.
There's a LOT you could read there so I'll briefly explain that teachers in different countries had students blog and tag their posts with a unique key word, 'writingmatrix'. The students in these countries then used http://technorati.com to find other blog posts (with ANY authority) tagged 'writingmatrix'. They browsed the available blogs with intent to find some that interested them and then they left comments in each other's blogs, or tagged them in http://del.icio.us, and/or linked to them from their own blogs (causing the link from their post to appear in the blog they linked to) and writers developed audiences in this way and met online in other ways as well.
The beauty of the project was that it was totally spontaneous, no pre-arrangement with anyone is necessary, and in fact anyone here can do a Google or Technorati search on 'writingmatrix' and see what comes up and/OR tag a blog post 'writingmatrix' and find it in the Technorati listing later. We could do the same with the tag 'blogging4educators' and if you want to double your fun you can tag your posts both ways, plus add any other tag that occurs to you.
I have made some screen casts about Google Reader. One of them shows how you can search on blogging4educators in Technorati (and follow the feed on that SEARCH in Google Reader).
http://213.42.148.233/file.php/83/internetsearch/google_reader_manage_feeds.swf
On Microblogging
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blogging4educators/message/737
Someone wrote expressing disappointment that it was taking time to develop a following through blogging. I replied:
- Remember that blogs appeal to NICHE interest. Persevere. Blog from the heart.
- Be sure you TAG TAG TAG. People use searches like Technorati and Google Blog Search and others (Google 'blogsearch') to find postings on topics that interest them. Tags are key to their finding your blog.
- Twitter is emerging as a tool for getting you on the map. This is a good article on how Twitter can help drive traffic to your blog:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/01/23/9-benefits-of-twitter-for-bloggers/
And finally, getting down to the nitty gritty ...
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blogging4educators/message/805
Someone wrote to ask:
i'm on blogger and i can't find my blog on technorati. i only see it as a link on one of my friend's blog. i can't find it on google either. :( so clearly i haven't checked something properly. do you happen to know what?
I was waiting for this question.
Technorati and http://blogsearch.google.com/ search blogs to help you find ones you you are looking for but don't know about yet. I haven't used blogsearch that much and I don't know whether or not it searches for tags in blog postings.There is information here that says it utilizes blog 'structure' http://www.google.com/help/about_blogsearch.html but I found no mention of tags. A search on blogging4educators only turns up 19 results. I turned the safe filter off, and got the same.
Notice point 5 at the above URL. It points to information about pinging
http://www.google.com/help/blogsearch/about_pinging.html
Now, how does Google or Technorati know that a blog exists? It has to at some point ping that blog. A ping is like a sonar packet of data that one server sends another, which the receiving server acknowledges and returns a ping to that effect. So to start the process your blog has to ping Google or Technorati and say, yoo hoo, here I am. Normally the search engines troll blog sites and look for blogs, ping them, and once they've found them, follow them, but in case you have to go proactive, there is information on how to do that here:
http://www.google.com/help/blogsearch/about_pinging.html
I know more about this with Technorati. Technorati searches on TAGS in blogs, but you have to be sure your blog is PUBLIC (somewhere in your settings you can make it so). This will enable it to communicate with blog search engines (i.e. ping them and answer pings). If it still doesn't show on listings, you might have to manually send a ping to the search engine.
David Warlick has some information about how you can do that with Technorati here: http://hitchhikr.com/index.php?mode=faq#2
Also, you can register with Technorati. Once you've done that you can 'claim' your blog. If you follow this procedure you'll eventually reach a point where you can ping Technorati. Yoo hoo, I'm here !!
When we were experimenting with writingmatrix we had a lot of people, including me, who could not get their blogs to show up in Technorati listings despite numerous attempts using all the tricks mentioned so far. I wrote them to ask what was going on. They wrote back that they would look into it. Eventually they came up with a tweak on their interface whereby you can adjust the level of authority you want your blog results to be invested with. If you are researching latest developments on a vexing physics problem you might want to weed out hits where the poster is not known. If you are dealing with first time bloggers (educators, that's us!)
then you want to see posts of blogs of students and colleages with zero 'authority'. So now Technorati have made it possible to search on posts with ANY authority. This is what you want. You can see how to adjust this in my screencast given in the wiki for Week 3:
- Managing Feeds in Google Reader (3.5 mb)
http://213.42.148.233/mod/resource/view.php?id=13029 or
http://213.42.148.233/file.php/83/internetsearch/google_reader_manage_feeds.swf
When I do a search in Technorati on blogging4educators tagged posts with ANY
authority http://technorati.com/search/blogging4educators?authority=n&language=en I get 48 hits. If i change this to 'a little' authority that number reduces to 8 hits.
What is 'authority'? According to Technorati, authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has - from http://support.technorati.com/faq/topic/71
At our level of blogging, use ANY authority in your searches.
This probably sounds more complicated to some of you than you wish it was, but this is the reality as far as my colleagues and I in the Writingmatrix project have been able to work it out over the past several months. On the up side, my posts are now showing up in Technorati listings ;-) So try some of the hints indicated above and let us know if it solves your problem (and if not, that's ok too, because your feedback will help push us to the next level of discovery)
In summary: How to get involved in Writingmatrix
Writingmatrix is a very minimalist project, as Paul Allison says, it's "Using the web as it is".
1. Have your students blog.
2. Have them tag their posts 'writingmatrix' (plus any other tags they want to use)
3. Have them check technorati for posts on writingmatrix with any authority
Just use this link: http://technorati.com/search
With any luck they'll start seeing their posts in there (oooh there's one of mine!)
4. Have them find posts in there that they like (455 listed at the moment)
5. Have them comment on those posts
6. Have them link to posts they like in their blogs
In reality, the teacher might want to come to grips with the concepts above in order to understand what to do if the students' blogs aren't showing in the listings.
The result should be that your students' blogs appear and that they attract some attention in the form of comments, links back, and so on.
Let us know if it works (or if it doesn't and we'll try to figure out how we can improve the system). And if you already KNOW, been there done that, then we want to hear from YOU.
Ever Inquiringly,
Vance
ESL-EFL BLOGS. Here you can read what some language teachers from around the world have written in their blogs.
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- (Subscribe to this page via RSS!)