Blogger's Bits of Stuff

The Right Family

2009-03-23T11:14:00.000-07:00

I just found a very nice activity, which has been sitting on my hard drive for a while.

The Right Family
Objective: to stress the importance of active listening
Materials: one possible object/pen per player
Description: Have the sts stand in circle. Explain them that every time they hear the word'right', they are to pass the object in their hands to the person on their right. Every time they hear the word'left', they are to pass the object in their hand to the person on the left. Practice a few times.

Read the following story to the students:

Active Listening

'This is the story of the Right Family. Last night, the Right family went to see a baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and the Minnesota Twins. They left the house at six o'clock , right after the family finished dinner. Mr. Right drove everyone to the game in the red family van, which is always parked on the left side of the garage.
In the van were Mrs. Right, Bobby Right, Katie Right , and Joey Right.
As they drove down their street, Mrs. Right waved to Lisa, their neighbor, who lives two houses down on the left. She was watering her garden on the right side of her house.
As the Right family approached Fenway Park, Mr. Right exclaimed: " I can't remember where I where I left the tickets." Joey Right said: 'Dad I saw you put them in your right hand pocket.' Mr Right checked, but thet were not there. Katie said: 'No, Dad, that isn't right, you left the tickets with me for safe keeping. I have them right here in my purse.'
'What a relief,' said Mr Right as he turned left into the stadium parking lot. Joey almost left his baseball glove in the van, but right when Mr.Right was about to lock the doors, he remembered he had left it under his seat.
The Right family had to wait in line for a bit, but finally made it to their seats in left field.
As they sat down, Mr.Right looked to his left at the whole Right family and smiled. He had made the right decision getting the tickets for this game."

Debrief the experience:

What details do you remember about the story?

How did you focus on passing the object affect how well you listened?
What other things distract us when we are trying to listen?

(Source: Coach Seminar, Lancaster, 2003 )

2008-02-03T05:46:00.000-08:00

Poodwaddle.com

Just liked that new tool...

CNN News Update

2005-08-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

The latest news in the U.S. and around the world is at:

http://www.cnn.com/services/podcasting/newscast/rss.xml

Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery

2005-08-07T00:36:00.000-07:00

"Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery is a freeware data recovery tool, specifically designed to work with digital images. It allows you to recover digital photos accidentally deleted from digital camera memory. "

You may download it from here:
http://www.z-a-recovery.com/download.htm

2005-07-15T01:19:00.000-07:00

Back home from Sweden. I did it as part of an educational trip with twenty kids . We started in Minsk, travelled to Poland by bus , then took a ferry in Gdynya and ended up in Sweden ( Karlskrona)... Wow, it was cool!...

My Flickr account holds the first batch of photos from my trip . The pics are tagged 'sweden'.You can view them here.< http://www.flickr.com/photos/imageguy/tags/sweden/

Seems like I've missed a lot, especially Graham Stanley's presentation in TI. Catching up right now.

English Language Listening Lab Online

2005-06-04T05:51:00.000-07:00

For listening practice, check out Elllo which is at:

http://www.elllo.org/index.htm

"There you can listen to accents from English speakers from all over the world, test your comprehension with a quiz, and read along at the same time."

Elllo provides a collection of audio by learner's level ( high beginner / low intermediate / high intermediate / advanced )

Thanks Aaron for a great link!
http://thenewtanuki.blogspot.com/

2005-05-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, May 8 Andy Pincon and the Webheads in Action were hosting a free online virtual eConference compliment to the 23rd Tutor Mentor Conference which will be held at Northwestern University's Law School from May 12-13.

The Tutor Mentor eConference has been designed to fit into each international time zone and be convenient for the regional presenters and their regional audiences. Great idea , Andrew!

The session started with Michael singing live from Adelaide, Australia. He brought up a page with the words and did the Webheads favorite song. It was great! ' Happy on Line' has become a webheads hit. Buthaina and Daf started dancing. Wow!!! Bravo Michael.

It was great to meet again, Maggie, Vance,Teresa, Buthaina, Bee, Daf and many other Webheads. We also met Dan Bassill .

While in session, Elizabeth and I hooked up our webcams and took a couple of shots:

I missed Elizabeth and Mario's presentation dealing with Real Video. I started having some major problems with my connection and could not log in again.

Some useful links to check out:

http://alothman-b.tripod.com/tutormentor_econf05_webheads.htm
http://www.alado.net/econference2/schedule0505.htm
http://www.digibridge.org

2005-04-30T04:21:00.000-07:00

Vance Stevens was invited to address the Qatar Teachers English Network Conference (QTEN) in Doha. The title is “Blogging in online communities of practice: Impact on language learning and teacher professional development”

He wrote:

" Blogging is an Internet phenomenon with significant impact on both language learning and teacher professional development, It is now possible for students AND teachers to create their own web pages in minutes and, with minimal guidance, extend these to more elaborate web sites. This workshop will guide participants in creating and developing their own blog sites, and illustrate and discuss ways that blogs can be configured to create authentic, interactive, communicative, reflective, creative, and motivating learning environments that engage students and provide a means for teachers to further their ongoing professional development. Members of the Webheads community of practice are invited and encouraged to attend from their respective locations and interact with the on-site audience. "

Bee, Teresa, Susanne, Buth, Hala and I volunteered to assist in this presentation. Bob, Candace, Darli, and Ale joined us in Elluminate at 07:00 GMT.

Our producer and moderator in Doha was Florin. They had about 30 participants on-site. With Vance presenting, we were looking forward to the first "fresh baked blogs". You can find some of them at:

http://abuyusif.blogspot.com
http://activstudio2.blogspot.com

Florin reported that they had created 20 blogs. Amazing!

Candace ( San Diego, California ) video taped our presentations in Elluminate. " I didn't do anything fancy,- she said, - I just held up my little video camera in front of the computer screen "

At the end of the session, Bee invited us to visit http://dekita.org . This site was born this morning.

2005-04-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

A virtual potluck is an event without
a "planned menu". The session participants brought something of their
choice for everyone to share.

The event took place at the Department of International Relations.
There were 10 students with me on-site in Minsk.We had two computers
working,a data projector and a microphone.Susanne and I moderated
the session.I conducted the session from a PC running Elluminate which
was projected on the screen in our PC Lab.

The Elluminate worked well for Susanne.In Minsk we experienced some
major problems with the voice tool.We used the Direct Messaging area
most of the time, but we were able to talk a couple of times. The Direct
Message conversation and the Whiteboard activities were saved by
Susanne.We decided not to use some wbd interactive exercises.

Again,my thanks go to Susanne for providing a virtual home for us on
Tuesday.

Our joined photo blog is at http://potluck.buzznet.com/
Susanne and I are looking forward to hearing from my students.
We invited them to post their comments to our blog, which is at
http://goinupstream.blogspot.com/

Virtual Potluck

2005-04-17T04:02:00.000-07:00

Susanne and I are preparing a Virtual Potluck session with my students. A 'virtual potluck' is an event without a planned menu. All or a least most of those attending, including my students , bring something of their choice for everyone to share. I know that Elizabeth ( hope she makes it ! ) is bringing a northwestern wild salmon with lemon-mustard-dill marinade ! Yummy!!!

Yes,... back to our potluck event! Susanne has been our Mystery Guest for a couple of weeks. She has been trying to raise the curiosity of my students and make them ask all sorts of questions to find out who she is. We've been sharing my Class Blog which is at: http://www.goinupstream.blogspot.com/ and this synch session which is going to take place on Tuesday, April 19 is a follow up activity.

We are going to use this experiment for Vance's session on April 30. Sus and I are in the middle of creating a PPP which will be used as a springboard to start the whole thing. Hope it works!

Writing Activities

2005-04-03T01:47:00.000-08:00

Nick recently put up a very interesting post on writing activities in class.

He writes:

"In a writing class, just about anything can be tried. A sampler of ideas:

* as writing journals (duh).
* as reading response journals.
* as research spaces where students post notes on research ideas and processes.
* as writing-sharing spaces, where essay drafts are posted and the comment feature lets classmates offer feedback.
* as place for students to write about things that don't fit into the class, but arise from having been in the class -- the tangents, outtakes, and other ideas that percolate but often are left unattended.
* as a place to post and comment on photos.
* as a place to put audio notes and ideas as they occur -- get a good idea on the way to someplace and not near a pen, or keyboard? Audioblog it with your cell phone.
* as a place for assigned writing topics -- civic discourses, questions about reading, continuations of class discussions and other bits of homework and classwork that usually come in as bits on bits of paper can come in as bytes on blogs. More of the work of the class can be captured and saved by students, and reviewed and reflected on by teachers."

Podcasting News

2005-03-21T12:28:00.000-08:00

Here's a good source of some free
audio files and clips:

http://www.podcastingnews.com/forum/links.php

The Daily Idiom

Idiom and slang podcast lessons for learners of English at the intermediate to advanced level:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0143010/

Each lesson focuses on one idiom or slang expression.

Plus...

Podcasting Graphics
http://www.feedforall.com/podcasting-graphics.htm

ClockLink.com

2005-03-19T12:13:00.000-08:00

... and how to use it.

Check out my Class Blog at:
http://goinupstream.blogspot.com

What is PubSub?

2005-03-13T07:01:00.000-08:00

"PubSub is a matching service that instantly notifies you when new content is created that matches your subscription. Using a proprietary Matching Engine, PubSub is able to read millions of data sources on your behalf and notify you instantly whenever a match is made."

2005-03-08T03:26:00.000-08:00

David Tosh, Ben Werdmuller write:

"The e-portfolio is used as a skills checklist. Once the course is over, discontinued use; what a waste....."Creation of a learning landscape where learners engage in the whole process both academically and socially should increase the opportunity to build one's learning instead of just being the recipients of information."

"Incorporating weblogs, social networking and the e-portfolio to create a new learning landscape may fashion a system allowing the management of material and creation of public interfaces but also an opportunity for reflection, engagement and the formation of communities of learning and
socialising providing a means to promote deep learning."

Apcala is a new tool to explore:

"It has a powerful mix of access control, file repository, weblogging and social networking.
Apcala is about sharing experiences, ideas, information.
You can control every aspect of your apcala.
Upload video, audio, images and text - attach meta-data and tags to this work - share it within communities you build.
Apcala has the ability to search through blog postings, uploaded files and profiles. It is a complete online personal system. "

And the latest news from incorporated subversion

"Dave Tosh says in his comments
“We are planning to release the system as Open Source - hopefully by the end of this week, fingers crossed!”

Hopefully, by the end of the week we'll get something new to try.

Elgg open source

Cyber Year Books

2005-03-03T04:04:00.000-08:00

Do you feel like trying anything new? How about writing a Cyber Year Book? High School Year Books used to be very popular. Try to find your own Year Book. I know, you keep it somewhere !... Well, it might be in the basement... Have you checked there?...

Anyway, when you open your Year Book you may find the following pages:

Principle's Message
Editor's Message

Valedictory (if it's a grad class )
Class History
Class Prophecy

Congratulations to the Graduating Class

Greenie Babies (photos)
Name:
Nickname:
Future Plans:
Probable Destination:
Favourite Saying:
Present Love: (?)
Activities:
Last Will and Testament

Staff (photos)

The Young and the Restless ( photos)
Can you Imagine?

Say Cheese! ( photos)
Smiles of the Century
Feeling like A Million...

Good Times ... Great Friends
Special Events
Top of the Class
House Crawl
Booze Cruise
Pub Crawl
Pub Crawlers
Super Dance

Year-In-Review
And the Winner is ...
Career Day

Add your own ideas. Your students may play with images, and try different writing styles. I think that buzznet.com would be a good place to start your project.

Happy Blogging!

2005-02-27T09:51:00.000-08:00

Time flies... We have reached the end of the course. Thanks everyone for sharing your great ideas and 'know-hows'.

A special thank you for Bee, Aaron and Graham. It was a fantastic course with lots of things to learn...Yes, I would be interested in keeping in touch.

I've just read Nancy's post . She writes:

"What I think would be more valuable would be us continuing to post and to read and comment on each others' blogs. That is where the real impetus to continue blogging will come from...What we need to do now is learn to communicate with each other through our blogs. That is, after all, the focus of this session."

I like the idea... I think that we may continue to use wiki. So, if you have a good link to share, or if you start a new project, just pop in and let us know about it.

Happy blogging!

KnowTips Conference, February 25

2005-02-27T07:52:00.000-08:00

First time presenting in LearningTimes with Vance Stevens ( Abu Dhabi), Susanne Nyrop ( Farum, Denmark), and Dafne Gonzalez ( Caracas, Venezuela ) as part of a panel on Webheads - Intuitive Chaos Management in Online Interaction . Nice team to work with!

I shared my own experience in coordinating a two day blended event with 30 teacher participants on location in Minsk with a dozen of webheads, guest teachers and instructors who joined the 6th International BelNATE-IATEFL conference “Teaching English as a World Language in the Information Age” online from their local schools, universities and home computers.

Check out Vance's page.

KnowTips Conference

2005-02-27T02:49:00.000-08:00

Sue Dumont wrote that Jonathan Finkelstein highlighted "the introductory ice-breaker when participants of the conference were asked to post pictures of themselves and their favourite coffee mugs in the Mug Shot Gallery at the Online Conference Cafe. He described this fun and interactive activity "like an opening cocktail party" that was a key factor in building instant community. "

An interesting wrap-up session about the Iliinois Online Conference Awards hosted by Jonathan is at: http://www.learningtimes.net/ioc2004awards.shtml.

2005-02-16T12:37:00.000-08:00

I started a new project in writing with my students. It's Jonathan Finkelstein's idea.

The introductory message reads:

"Hello and welcome to a new project in writing! This semester it is about coffee mugs.

I invite you to tell the stories of your coffee mugs.
What do they really represent for us? Are they linked in any way to what we are up to? Why do we buy them?

You can start posting photos and commments right away. Take a picture of your favourite coffee mug and post it to buzznet.com To post a photo, email attached images to: mugshots.mugshots@buzznet.com or login and hit POST. ( Contact your English language Instructor to get a password ).

Use the description area to tell us why it's your favorite. Feel free to use the"comments" box below others' "mug shots" for some coffee break small talk.

Got it?

Hope you enjoy this new experience."

2005-02-16T12:32:00.000-08:00

Week 5 started with a very nice post by Nathan Lowell
and Julie Lindsay's presentation 'Weblogs and Student Portfolio Projects Why and How to Implement Them .'

I missed the session. I could not log in. I read the script of her presentation which was uploaded to the Files area of the weblogging group.

Her students " have developed their online digital portfolios by following the portfolio development process of planning, collecting and selecting, reflecting, designing and evaluating their work with support from both the online and face-to-face classroom communities."

She adds:

'the difference I see with the students is that they 'blog' for their process journal. And they join discussion 'blogs' for required peer assessment and other work as part of their curriculum'.... Students are using www.blogger.com for process journaling

.... as part of ICT they must keep a process journal to discuss progress, problems, evaluations, etc...This becomes their 'private' place to store ideas and thoughts to do with their work....'

new ideas and projects

2005-02-13T11:22:00.000-08:00

Barbara Schulz is doing a lot in creative writing with her students. She remarks that recipes have come naturally out of her writing project, so she decided to create a weblog just for that purpose at sharecooking.blogspot.com You have to be a team member on WriteRewrite to contribute a recipe.

Crawley asked students "to research EFL sites on the web and post reviews to the blog thus completing a class assignment which checks their ICT skills in English, their ability to read etext and work in a communicative context".

Phil Whitehead started The Poetry Pizzeria platform for poetry projects on the web. "It is a place where student poets, teacher poets and poet poets can converge to publish, perform and celebrate each other's poetry. It will also be a window into the real life poetic exploits taking place in schools, colleges and communities around the globe."
How about going blogging Phil?

Janet is creating a blog on American English Idioms for her class.

Interesting! Let's see what Week 5 brings us...

2005-02-11T13:02:00.000-08:00

Barbara Ganley's project in creative writing is great.
One of her students writes:

"Blogging can be pretty intimidating, frankly it can be scary as hell. As most of you probably know from years of e-mails and instant messages, it can be hard to convey what you mean on the internet, especially to people you don’t know very well. But I can assure you that reluctance to put yourself out there (both in your writing and your comments to your peers) will fade away the more you use the blog. Soon, you will be checking it every day, obsessively, without even thinking about it. And not just your blogs, but the blogs of everyone in your group, and maybe even a couple of people whose writing you just find yourself drawn to. The most important thing is that you get into your blogging habit right away, so that you become comfortable with it faster".

2005-02-09T13:30:00.000-08:00

An Annotated Bibliography on Weblogs and Blogging, with a Focus on Library/Librarian Blogs by Susan Herzog is at:

http://blog-bib.blogspot.com/

Embedding Audio in a Blog

2005-02-09T01:56:00.000-08:00

Michael Coghlan has been doing it in various ways. He records the sound file using Audicity, "saves it as an mp3 file and then uploads it to a server somewhere"

He adds:

"...if you go to VIEW > SOURCE, or PAGE SOURCE in the menu at the top of your browser you can see the code for this page. Look for the bit of code that starts with 'embed'. Cut and paste that bit of code into your blog, and change the URL so that it points to the sound file that you have uploaded, and you should see your sound file embedded in your page."

Yesterday Teresa mentioned Handy Bits in her presentation for the EVOnline 2005 Weblogging Workshop.

Here is a link to Handy Bits:

http://www.handybits.com/voicemail.htm

Teresa's blog Have Fun with English is at:

http://www.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/school/fun-with-english5.htm

2005-02-09T01:09:00.000-08:00

Thanks to CybeRecruiter for a couple of good links about the RSS thing.

What is RSS? by Mark Pilgrim
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html

RSS FEEDS
http://www.infoworld.com/rss/rss_info.html

Well..., the first article is a little bit complicated. I got lost reading HTML. Hope to read it again to find some cool tricks. The second article lists the most popular feeds.

A complete list of InfoWorld's feeds is at:
http://www.infoworld.com/rss/rssfeedslist.html

Have Fun with English

2005-02-09T01:00:00.000-08:00

A presentation for the EVOnline 2005 Weblogging Workshop

Have Fun with English: A beginner EFL blog
by Teresa Almeida d'Eca

Vanue: LearningTimes

Slide Sequence:

What is Have Fun with English?
How did it start?
Why a blog for absolute beginners?
Blog provider or custom-made?
What sort of layout?
What type of content?
Unexpected but welcome add-ons
A european Exchange projects
Voice Mail
Photos
Drawings
e-Cards
Photo stories: the latest trend
A final curiosity: the need for flexibility

Well done Teresa! I like your Hotpotato exercises. :-)

2005-02-07T08:11:00.000-08:00

a culture of feeds: syndication and youth culture

... quite a different point of view... the guy quits using RSS / syndication readers. RSS is for the infogeeks, while youth culture is into IM and things like LiveJournal.

RSS: The New Killer App for Educators

2005-02-07T06:46:00.000-08:00

What is RSS? This webcast recording about Rich Site Summary (RSS) led by Will Richardson (the person behind the "Weblogg-ed" blog) provides a comprehensive overview of RSS and how it can be used by educators.

If you are interested, the recording of this session can be found at:
http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=679449

To access the recording, click on 'Enter Now'.

Jam Session in TappedIn: Using Weblogs

2005-02-07T06:42:00.000-08:00

Week 2 focused on contrasting and comparing various asynchronous tools, different weblog categories and uses. It started with a great presentation of James Farmer on Monday. Jam session in TappedIn featured Yu Hua Chen ( Changhua City, Taiwan) Dana Watson ( Michigan,USA, ) and Watson Jason Reagin (Suzhou, China ). They started blogging not long ago and shared their personal experience in using blogs in their classrooms.

Dana started blogging to avoid emailing. Stella majored in CALL and blogs were part of her research work. She created her personal linguistic blog and a Taiwanese community blog. She has been blogging since then for about half a year.

Warren adds:

After reading the article "Introducing your students to blogs" in "IATEFL's Issues," by Graham Stanley, I felt that it would be worth looking at blogging further. At the same time I was planning to attend an ELT conference in Beijing, China. The organizers asked if I would consider writing and presenting a paper. I saw the excellent opportunity to do both. I started my own personal/professional blog and then started writing.

Questions:

Why did you start blogging?
What advantages and inconveniences have you three experienced in using blogs until now?
Do you see any cons of using blogs in your classes?
Do you check your students' personal blog?
How do your young learners take to blogs?
Do you integrate blogging in your assessment?
How different is blogging from journal keeping and logging?
In the long run, do the students always maintain interest?
Do you ask your students (young children) to blog at home?

Main points:

Using technology is exciting for learners.
Blogs are a form of publishing. Blogs give the learners confidence and pride in their work. Students can be very motivated at the idea of owning a site on the internet.
People who are shy in class feel more comfortable to express themselves on the blog after class ( lots of teachers are very happy about! ).
Checking students' blogs takes a lot of time especially if you have a big class. Feeback is important and it can be also part of their assignment.
Teachers are experimenting with what works and what doesn't. The idea is to find an activity which makes students active and productive and where they see the benefit or interest of it.
We all suffer from mistake-oriented tradition in teaching which stiffles creativity and voice.
Structuring class assignments is very important.
Some teachers integrate blogging in their assessment.

To those born in the 40's, 50's and 60's...

2005-01-25T04:16:00.000-08:00

...please read Michael's post at :
http://mikecogh.blogspot.com/

Thank you Michael!

2005-01-25T04:08:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Cleve, Graham and Gerry for their liveblogging of James Farmer's presentation on 'Communication Dynamics and Communities ' The session was held in Alado in the Webheads group with live audio, slides and webpages.

I could not attend James Farmer's session in Alado. Each time I try to get in, I can't get through. Cleve writes that it was a 'fascinating content' and a 'fascinating delivery medium'.

Some important remarks:

James: Blogs are like organic cities that don't develop in neatly organised areas... A weblog environment is a very communicative environment. A weblog is a very individual, owned space.

Cleve: JF points out that blogs are chaotic and organic, instead of rigid, planned and structured (someone types in: like life?).

James: The design of online environments is very much like those of physical learning environments - design a place where people can relax and be who they want and you'll get a different kind of discussion than if the environment is ordered and strict, etc...the environment influences the communication dynamics.

( Me: Good point! )

Meeting Anne Davis in TappedIn

2005-01-21T08:38:00.000-08:00

Anne Davis was talking about her experience with blogs. I enjoyed her presentation. One of her favorite blogs was called Idioms Are Fun! The students loved it. Here's what Anne thinks about the whole thing:

Learn from the students.
Start with simple things.
Have a class blog first and let the students participate through comments.
Think of the ways to amaze and hook your students into the power of blogging!
Give a voice to your students.
Have a door open and listen to all the voices
Take care about the audience.
It is hard work but the rewards are many.

Bee adds:

learn as you go...and improve on it!

2005-01-19T07:37:00.000-08:00

Comment from CybeRecruiter...

"...my suggestion...instead of students blogging about themselves, have them come up with an idea, product, something meaningful to them...to blog, this would essentially get them interested, research and various means of promotion would give them an audience and the feeling that they are doing something good about something that could mean a lot for them..."

2005-01-16T04:01:00.000-08:00

Cought some good ideas on Wei Zhai blog:

"When students are under the pressure of implementing a technological application without receiving scaffolding that leads to their understanding and experiencing its usefulness, the technology is in for loss of its purpose...

...Richardson suspected that “by its very nature, assigned blogging in schools cannot be blogging. It’s contrived”.
He pointed out that students are blogging for the sole audience, the teacher, and when the course is over, they “drop blogging like wet cement” (as cited in Downes, 2004). In this case, students are not necessarily interested in using blog for learning probably because in the first place they haven’t been helped to develop this interest (Zhai, 2004).

Here is where teacher missed an important perspective: a new technological tool should converge with student interests. Technology is expected to be a facilitator rather than a burden for students learning.

...It is OK to introduce new educational technology to students but they need questions asked that will help them understand why they are doing what they are doing, they need guidance on how to use the technology, and they need to be convinced why they will gain benefit from using this technology. Teachers can not just thrust upon their students technologies, one piece after another, because soon, they will get fed up with so many weird stuff that doesn’t make sense at all."

A Comment on Comments

2005-01-10T13:27:00.000-08:00

Mike, a guy from New Jersey ,writes:

"I just realized something about Blogger comments: unless you want a Blogger account, you can't leave personal information. It calls you anonymous, so unless you manually put in info about yourself, you end up as a nameless voice. Blogger comments is the only comment system that doesn't give you the option of filling in Name, Email, and Website that I've come across."

I agree,... and someone should do something about that.

how to build a blog

2005-01-10T13:25:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't seen it, Larry Magid has a good article on how to build a blog.
Read the whole thing at : http://www.pcanswer.com/articles/buildablog.htm

Compulsory Blogging?

2005-01-08T09:52:00.000-08:00

From Graham :

"Do you think it's necessary to set assignments to encourage students to blog? There's always the danger that if students think that the weblog is compulsory, then it might generate a negative attitude towards it.

I've experimented with both compulsory / optional blogging with students and have to say that, in my experience, although you can get some negative reactions at first, in the long run, making blog posts part of the course (ie. compulsory)worked out better."

Joel wrote:

"We have always made responding compulsory and part of their grade. This came from our earlier research on listservs that some students really got into in and some didn't. We also have specific goals for using blogs that are an integral part of the writing process the the students have to do them in the same way they would have to do anything else. We require a certain length and be posted reguarly, which are the only requirements for getting credit. Blogs are usually about 20% of their class grade, so all the students have to do to get a full mark is post."

My remarks:

It's a very interesting question.... I've also experimented with compulsory and optional blogging. I don't like the word 'compulsory'. Do you?. At the same time, I understand that some things have to be done .
I would not make blogs part of my students' grades. A blog is a personal journal of your students' thoughts, comments and ideas. I agree that compulsory blogging might generate a negative attitude towards it.

GEOLOC

2005-01-07T06:35:00.000-08:00

Geoloc is a new service of geographical localization of the visitors . It is an original service which creates an interactivity with the visitors of your web site or blog.

Geoloc is very simple to use. No programming, or downloading, just cut and past!

Wanna try, check out the following link:
http://www.geo-loc.com/

Blogging is an exploration...

2005-01-07T06:31:00.000-08:00

Right! I learned how to start , change templates, post images and even add my students' links.
I learned how to add any HTML code to my template. By the way, the complete template code is located on the Template tab in Blogger. The exact location in the code will depend on where you want something to appear. Usually, people put these kinds of things in their sidebars or at the bottom of the page.

So, if your template does not already have a link section, it should be easy to create one. Look in your template code and find the sidebar section. To keep the formatting the same, copy one of the existing headers, such as
"Archives", and change the label to "Links" (or whatever you prefer).
Underneath the new header, you can add the links as described in our Blogger Help article here: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=110

Hello there

2005-01-07T05:23:00.000-08:00

Hello there:

I teach EFL for university students majoring International Law.

It was a great year for our Association in Belarus (Belarusian Association of Teachers ofEnglish). We could launch the first online session. It was part of the 6th BelNATE-IATEFL Conference“Teaching English as a World Language in the Information Age”, which took place in November, 2004.Special Interest Groups extended the work of theBelNATE conference into seven specialist areas. We had 48 presentations, two workshops, a round table discussion plus five online sessions! Can you imagine that?http://www.ir.bsu.by/kel//Teachers/presentations.htm

This event brought together EFL/ELT professionals and instructors from different parts of the world. I say' Hi' to everyone who could join us in November:
http://pub33.bravenet.com/guestmap/view.php?usernum=2813894146

Blogging is fun! I started a couple of blogs with my students:
eConnections ( a joined project with Barbara Dieu andher students)
http://onlinewriting.blogspot.com/
Upstream EFL_Writing
http://upstreamwriting.blogspot.com

I am thinking of starting two photoblogs at buzznet.com Mugshots is one of them. By the way, it's Jonathan's ( Jonathan Finkelstein ) idea . I find it very interesting !
( http://mugshots.buzznet.com,/ )
Hopefully, my students enjoy this new experience next semester.

I'm interested in various blogging tools and blog projects. My main concern is how to maintain interest in a weblog student community.

So, let's start things rolling!