Workshop follow-up

I've just finished a workshop about using blogs and wikis in the language classroom with some very motivated English language teachers. There were some excellent ideas from the group, and some important issues got raised as well. This was a very interesting group with a pretty good understanding of how the web works, and I hope that they will be able to go on and use blogs/wikis in their teaching.

UPDATE: One of the teachers has already got his blog started - have a look at Mr. Maxwell's lessons...

Some interesting issues raised:
1. Students are already enthusiastically blogging: can we harness that for our own purposes?

I would hope that some of the enthusiasm that they feel for their own blogging would spill over into the blogging that they do for their class. I can't stress enough the importance of setting out some ground rules, as this teacher has done, so that students understand the purpose of their blogging, and understand related privacy and ethical issues.

2. If you create a wiki, does that mean that anyone in the class can edit anything?

It basically does. But my experience is that people tend to need encouraging to edit, not the other way around. Once again, setting out ground rules for how you expect students to go about editing, addressing ethical issues and so on, are essential. You can see an example of this here, and covering related issues here. Of course, you would need to think about your own context and negotiate a policy with your students.

3. How can we create and use multimedia in blogs?

Once students get past a certain level, they will be able to teach you this (which might seem a bit scary if you like being in charge). Blogger has an add video function, and it is also very easy to add video that you have uploaded to Googlevideo, Youtube or Teachertube. There are lots of different ways to create multimedia, ranging from simple slideshows with audio to edited movies. Here are some useful links:

Online video for learning: A comprehensive list of online tools that you can use to edit and share video online
Jumpcut: Online video editor
Voicethread: Audio narrated slideshows with audio comments from listeners

Windows Movie Maker and Apple's iMovie can also be used to create movies. Because so many people and institutions use Windows, I guess you will want to use that (sorry Mac users, but you probably already know how to use iMovie don't you?). Feel free to browse the animations below to get some idea of how Moviemaker works:

How to import media into a Windows Movie Maker project
How to add a title frame to a Windows Movie Maker project
How to clip a movie in Windows Movie Maker
How to add a transition in Windows Movie Maker
How to export a project from Windows Movie Maker

A nice idea for a project:
One teacher suggested that students could work in groups to create travel brochures for different countries around the world, each group adding the work to a different section of a wiki. A project like that would allow students opportunities for peer and self correction (as well as teacher feedback) using the discussion function of the wiki.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to respond below.

Blogs and wikis workshop

I'm with a group of teachers, figuring out how to use blogs to support English language teaching in schools. If there is anyone out there that wants to contribute, please feel free to add to the comments section below.

I've collected some links to some class blogs and I would like to discuss those with you. Before you have a look at the links, it might be a good idea to think about what blogging actually is.

When you look at the links you will probably notice that there are different things you can do with a class blog:

1. Post administrative information
   
2. Post learning tips for your students
   
3. Have students share work with a real audience
   
4. Facilitate collaborative project learning
5. And much much more...
   

Another important point to bear in mind is that blogging is supposed to be motivational for students. Looking at these blogs, how have the teachers made the learning experience motivational for students?

Blogging is also extremely flexible. Looking at these blogs, what range of learning opportunities do you see for students?

Here are the links:

Sister project showcase
Room 9 Nelson central’s blog
Mr. C’s class blog
English 131 blog
CALL Lessons 2005-2007

Which of these blogs do you like the best? What do you think might work for you? Let me know what you think.

Getting started with blogs

So you want to set up a blog? Nothing could be easier. There's a very good step by step guide for setting up a blog in Blogger available from the Ohio State University.

If you're going to be reading student blogs then you should probably get familiar with RSS, and set up a Reader. RSS is a simple way of streaming web content to your computer, by subscribing to websites that frequently update. For example, you could subscribe to a news site and then be alerted every time a new article is published (careful, it gets overwhelming fast!).

More about RSS here.