Finding Blogs for teachers

I found this web site for finding teacher blogs:http://esl.about.com/sitesearch.htm?terms=teacher%20blog%20sites&SUName=esl&TopNode=99

A Great New Site for Blogging

While hunting for something else with Google, I found this great site for ESL teachers and students. There are videos and grammar helps and vocabulary building and pronunciation help and more, but there is also a place where students can register and post their own blogs or comment on other blogs. I put this site on Blackboard for the advanced students and I will ask them to register and try it out tomorrow. I'm not sure if we'll be able to do anything in one day because the web site needs to process the registration.
The web site is: http://www.englishclub.com/index.htm

Final Project II

I tried having the students use Twitter to answer a question which I required them to answer with a sentence containing an adjective clause. I had planned to collect the sentences in my account that I created for this purpose, and then have all the students read the sentences and analyze them for any errors. Unfortunately many students had a great deal of trouble getting into their Twitter accounts. I projected the sentences that some of the students managed to send. I realized what I should have done was to make this a 2 day project. I should have just made the rounds helping the student who were having problems and give the students who were successful another assignment, and then, display all the sentences the next day. I'll try this again.

I still think that having the students write a blog telling about their experiences or sharing what they've learned would be an interesting thing for them to do. I'm giving this some thought.

Twitter

Tomorrow I'm going to try Rita's suggestion and have the students tweet messages to me on my twitter page, where they are collected, and then project their answers so we can discuss what each student wrote.

Blogs

I tried the blog link in the Blackboard site for advanced oral communication. I'm not really sure what's different about it than discussion board but the students responded with "are we blogging?" They seemed to be excited about the idea. So, I decided to have the students try a real blog. On the site for sharing power point presentations there was one about getting started with a blog. I thought I'd show them that and then sign up for their own blog. It might be interesting for them to share their experiences about coming to a new country and see if they get some responses. I watched the video about ESS feeds, but that was only for signing up to get news. We have the one Rita created for our class so I need to find out how that is done. The students might also have to sign up for Twitter and start by following someone who has had the same experiences.

A Blog on Blackboard

I added a blog to two of my Blackboard sites (groups 5 and 6). I asked the students to blog about their opinion of the classes so far. I think they can do this anonymously as I checked that box. So far, I've had no takers. I hope they respond. For one thing I'd like to know if it's working. I'll check again tomorrow.

Did I lose my last post?

How long does it take for a post to appear? I added a post about google tools. It's not there!

15 Awesome Google Tools

There are several tools that might work really well in an ESL class. Google News Timeline is a great source of news if a teacher wanted to start a discussion about current events. Quotes from politicians where you can read quotes about the same topic side by side, again a great way to start a discussion, prepare an opinion speech or begin a debate. Google Moderator might be fun to use. It's an open forum for asking questions or gathering opinions. Students might be able to use this as a tool to become acquainted with social networking without the necessity of taking too much time. City tours again might be used as the basis of a writing assignment. Tour a city and write about it. There is also Google Indexing to find political speeches. This might be used as a way of studying how the language is used to convince people of a particular point of view.

Confused

I'm having a bit of a problem figuring out how all the related sites fit together. How does my blog and the class blog fit together? I can be in the page with all my blogs and I can also be in the page with my profile. What's the difference between the two? I know there's no such thing as a dumb question, but this might be one. I just seem to find myself lost when I start this process.

Little Red Riding Hood

What was that? I'm sure it took a lot of time to do this, but why? The sound track was terribly annoying. I suppose a person could pause it in certain parts and examine the graphs. In the length of time they were shown a person would have to absorb the information very quickly.

WIKIS in the Classroom article

The author suggested several uses for a WIKI in the classroom. One was for a group of teachers to build a curriculum. This probably isn't practical for us. The next idea was to have students use a WIKI for a group assignment. In ESL this might be something to try for upper level students. I might have students with some type of similar interest collect information about that interest. He also suggested giving a pre-reading assignment and then getting the students to ask questions before the next class. This is a possible idea especially in a reading class. The students might have questions about the vocabulary or they might not understand a particular passage. A student's writing can also be available on the WIKI for peer review. The author mentioned two possible problems. One is not having enough computers in classrooms, or, in our case, not having computer labs with all the computers in working condition.

New Technology Class

Here I am again. I hope I can relearn what I learned last semester and develop some new skills, one of which would be to feel more comfortable with all the technology.