EduBlog Insights

I came across an article today entitled “Theoretical and Practical Applications of Emergent Technology in ELT Classrooms; How the ‘Blog’ Can Change English Language Teaching” presented at “The 4th International Symposium on ELT in China.” (all in Chinese). The author is Mr. W. Jason Reagin, MEd. who teaches at Suzhou Singapore International School.  He discusses current practices for reading and writing in the ELT setting and the use of blogs in the ELT classroom. Her has a list of benefits, limitations and possible fixes, among other things. He has many benefits but one stuck me - “It creates a forum for the learner to be an individual.” That’s so true. I have really seen that with the ESL students I’ve worked with this year. He goes into the “ins and outs” of blogging. It’s good to see this being presented in the ELT arena.  The author has a blog called My blogging experiment with a tagline Where China, ESL Teaching & Technology come together. In his blog he posts, “As I think and plan for next school year (September 2004) I am thinking of ways to integrate BLOGS into my schedule of English, Social Studies, and Science classes. Any suggestion?” 

Do I! Here goes!

Question/Answer/Aha! Blog - After reading or discussing content, students could post questions, answers to others’ questions, and Aha’s! explaining how light bulbs came on from learning something previously unknown.

Current Events Blog - Blog about events in the news by writing comments, opinions, or questions and make connections to what they are learning in the class.

Idioms Blog - Have a class blog where sentences using idioms are displayed. The sentences can revolve around what they are learning in class. Then students can use the idiom in a sentence in the comments section.

Portfolio Blog - Students can create an ongoing portfolio of samples of their writing where they showecase their best pieces of writing.

Letters Home Blog - Students can use blogs to write letters home or to friends to discuss what they are learning in class.

Caption It Blog - Post photos and make captions or write a brief paragraph about it. They could relate to your content area.

Reflections Blog - Students can use blogs to recall, think about, and articulate what they have learned; connect new information to the known; and express their own thoughts.and feelings about topics.

OK, anyone up for adding to this list?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2004 at 3:33 pm and is filed under About Weblogs, Imported. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.