TEsol 2006 Internet fair
March 15-18. 2006
Using Educational Blogs to Motivate Writing
The Edublog as an extra component added to the course to enhance learning and motivate writing
|
TEsol 2006 Internet fair |
|
| Cristina Costa |
March 15-18. 2006 |
|
Using Educational Blogs to Motivate Writing The Edublog as an extra component added to the course to enhance learning and motivate writing |
|
Objectives:
Start with small experiences
Introduce students to edublogging
Motivate students
Develop writing skills
Process (strategies & activities):
The blog was introduced to the students in class. Its main features as well as the purpose of having one in class were presented to the students. The students were also told that they would be assigned a blog task per week.
1st Task
Students wrote self introductory messages and recorded them to upload onto the blog.
2nd Task
Students were asked to visit another English class's blog and leave messages.
3rd Task
Students were asked to volunteer to write and send out avatar messages to an English/Portuguese/Chinese/Tagalog community that was running at the time at BaW05 (The avatars are no longer available as we used a shareware version).
4th & 5th Tasks
Students were introduced to a Hungarian English class. E-mails were exchanged and also information about the two countries and their traditions.
Other information:
Students were provided with explanations and training on how to perform the tasks.
There was no formal assessment as it was an extra component that the teacher added to the course.
The student's feedback at the end of the course was quite positive and useful for the next blog experience.
Resources:
Only freeware tools were used.
Blogger provider used: www.blogger.com
WebServer: https://www.tripod.lycos.com/
Audio recorders and editors: http://www.handybits.com/ ; http://audacity.sourceforge.net/