I was just wondering if we could use PocketMod to incentivate students to write. There are some pre-defined pages we can choose from, and these include a storyboard page and lines. Maybe students from Kids and Elementary courses coudl use it as a picture dictionary, and Juvenile students could use it to tell a story or to retell the story of the book they have to read.
PocketMod is worth the visit.
I've been using Twitter to post the homework assignments for my Juvenile groups. Students don´t need to have an account to access the posts. On the first page students just need to type their class number and they can see all the posts related to that class. I add #las54a, #las66, #las75, or #las1B1 to the tweets, which creates a thread for the posts of each class.
Students find this use of Twitter really interesting, but I tell them visiting the site is not mandatory. I tell them to use Twitter in case they miss classes or if they can't remember what the homework was. Several students have mentioned checking it, and I have a couple of students following my posts. This can also be an incentive for me to post links to interesting sites for them, along with the class code.
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I'm trying to embed a playlist.com player with some songs I selected here. I'll try it on Ning, now.
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RSS is exactly what the name states: really simple syndication, a very useful way to collect and aggregate, in one place, all the information you want, about what you want or choose. RSS is useful when you want to be informed about a specific subject without having to visit many sites to check whether they have been updated. For instance, if you have a group of students and each student has a webpage, RSS helps you, sending you each page’s updated info. You can also choose to follow specific news, and be informed if and whenever a certain word appears.
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Just to let you know that http://onlinegamesforefl.blogspot.com has been updated. check some exercises from classtools.net that are really nice to be used in the classroom.
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It's amazing how easy it is nowadays to create a blog. You don't actually need to know anything about the internet or programming; you just need something to say. Well, the problem is not creating a blog,the problem is keeping the blog. I have started many blogs in the past few years, and gotten fired up in the first weeks, but I guess I felt like students who have to write a composition. The blogs turned out to be an obligation, and I felt like I did need to write something every day, every time. I've been trying to change my mind about it. Now I understand I can keep a blog without having to update it daily, that I can post only when I have something interesting to say, and that, even though there might be someone who reads the blog, what I post has to be meaningful to me. I have noticed that I have to keep a blog because I want to keep a blog, regardless of what others might think of it if or when they read it, and that feedback is not mandatory. I cannot expect every single viewer of my blog to leave a comment. But I used to, and not having feedback from readers would upset me. I pictured myself talking to a wall.
Some semesters ago I tried blogging for a group of adult learners. I would update the blog after every class, and sort of recap the class we had had, adding links and extra material for students to follow. Well, it was sort of a stillborn blogging project. Students eventually accessed it, but did not leave feedback on what they read, and this is what took my motivation away. I guess I know where I went wrong. As I mentioned above, I expected interaction to take place, and needed to have feedback from readers, which rarely happened. But I see now it was not my fault, it was just that I had different expectations. I wanted to blog for a specific group of people, and tried to please them. It became a burden to update a readerless blog, an obligation I had to keep because I had started.
But let's not lose heart. I learned that even though I might blog for a specific audience, the person I have to please is I myself first. Blogging, I can see it now, is sharing. Sharing what you think, know, like, discover, do, because someone, somewhere, will eventually read it, and if it is meaningful to them somehow, they will let you know. Do I sometimes still think I'm talking to walls? Of course I do. But I've put a mirror on the wall, and if no one listens to what I blog, well, I'm there listening to me. After all, I am always my first reader (sometimes the only one). That's what I had in mind to say about blogging.
Oh, if I want interaction, I have to tease readers to interact. So here goes a question to you, dear reader. Why do you blog? Feel free to leave a comment, a link, or just an "I have read it" message below.
Thanks for dropping by.
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This is a nice site to make quizzes. Check this one on expressions of quantity. I think it would be nice to use with the whiteboard. It's for 4B insideout, unit 13, page 122. http://www.superteachertools.com/speedmatch/index.php
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The first bookmark service I used was del.icio.us. I started using it so that I could access the pages both at work and at home. Then I learned about Diigo. I had heard of it, but thought it would be just like del.icio.us, so I took it for granted. I really didn’t feel the need to move to another bookmarking service. That was when Carla told me about Diigo and social bookmarking, and the features it had. I decided to give it a try, downloaded the toolbar for the browser and started using it. Maybe del.icio.us can do the same thing, but Diigo really caught me.
The advantages of social bookmarking are far too many to enumerate. I started going through other people’s bookmarks, sharing mine, finding groups who shared common interests, and organizing. Yes, organizing. I used to just Ctrl+D the pages, not giving too much attention to tagging. But tagging helped me find my bookmarks more easily, and that cut down some of my work.
I guess Diigo would be a great plus to the classroom, mainly to online courses. You don’t have to copy and paste the URLs to an e-mail, for instance. On the other hand, you have to convince students to use it, and this would be the difficult part. It took me some time to be convinced of its usefulness, so I imagine students’ resistance to it. I had some trouble getting around it, and using it too, and I’m sure I still take it for granted, I imagine how students will feel.
I would compare browsing Diigo to flipping through a dictionary, which is something I love to do. You start looking for a site (word) you want, and often end up finding (learning) new sites (words) that are really interesting and, the best part, useful. There’s a disadvantage to it, though. It usually takes longer to get what I want, and I keep forgetting the site (word) I was there looking for (up). I have come across many wonderful sites on Diigo already, but I still have to work on the social part of bookmarking, sharing. I promise I’ll do it soon.
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