I have gone through all the postings above and found them all interesting. There are some points that attracted me most and I’d like to comment on them.
In her rich writing, Susana mentioned the idea that blogging could be considered as an art. What makes a blog more attractive than another? What skills can help make you blog be more appealing? Is it its look? Or its content? Or both? You should really be an artist to make your students be interested in your blog!
I have used some other interactive web tools in my classes such as Moodle and Second Life, but never a blog. The first time I heard about blogging was with my students some years ago, but I knew that they didn’t and still don’t use them for studies. Almost every student has got a blog where he/she posts pictures, videos and some texts written in very informal styles. In my social context, students/teenagers like to keep their blogs as “a secret” especially from the adults. What I’d deduce from this is that, technically speaking, I wouldn’t have many problems with my students as far as blogging is concerned, but the great challenge is in fact how to make my blog cater for them and thereby attract and motivate them to interact, write and participate. What kind of blogs do teenagers like most? Surely both the content and the appearance concern them. Are there any practical tips that could make the students take part blogging because they like it and not because it is a part of the class assessment? When forced, learners do less and they do much better when they feel free doing a thing they like.
Hala nicely debated the idea of focusing on content or form. She clearly stated that she opts for content on the first rank rather than form. I think that the learners would rather debate ideas and would be pleased to publish them, but what might prevent them from not doing so is making mistakes. And if these corrected publically, no one would post anything. The learners should then be encouraged by stimulating interesting topics to them, but how could mistakes be corrected then?
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Hello Hamid! First of all congratulations for your reflections, I think you are really getting into blogs for English learning and teaching! I think that the questions about the mistakes depends on the level of English your students have and the type of work you are doing, If you use the blog during classes you can correct the mistakes after the students published the comments, for instance at home, and then tell the students to go there and check. I don`t think that, when we have a class blog for working with the students they will feel intimidated with the corrections and not post again (in my experience they didn`t, instead they became more and more careful and improved a lot)!
ReplyDeleteAnother way to control mistakes would be for the teacher to correct the students`previously prepared texts and hand them over again for them to post or to comment, depending on whether this would be a class or an individual blog!
Well, keep up the good work!
Susana
Thank you Susana for the reponse.
ReplyDeleteWell, I do agree with you that the interest we give to mistakes depends on the students' level in English but also their age. I also like the idea of previously correcting the students writings before they are published especially especially if the task is product-based writing. Otherwise, it would be demanding and time consuming editing all the students writings.
Thank you.
Keep tuned.
Hamid