Here's installment 3 (though maybe it should be Part 2A).

Participative student blogs may also have a combination of structured and unstructured prompts. You can see some excellent real-world examples of both in "An International Exchange" (from which the above graphic clip was taken):

Go HERE first.

Go HERE next.

To see the last post in "An International Exchange," go HERE.

This blog was featured, incidentally, in at least one book, (How to Teach English with Technology, by Gavin Dudeney and Nicky Hockly), and it has also been featured in online examples of blogging practice.

I was constantly excited and inspired to work with Carla and to be part of "An International Exchange."

Here's the second installment of "Blogging with Students. Please read all of it before commenting.

Participative Blogs

Class blogs of this type are different from announcement pages because in them, the expectation is the teacher and the students share in the creation of content: the teacher makes the initial post (which serves as a prompt), and students (either individually or as groups) respond to it.

The teacher's prompt may take several forms, among them the following:

• It may be a question which students are expected to answer.
• It may be a graphic, video, or audio file which students are expected to react to in some way.
• It may be an example (text, video, audio) which students are expected to evaluate or comment on.
• It may form the basis for a writing assignment following a specific rhetorical model (e.g., comparison/contrast, cause/effect, description).
• It may form the basis for work with critical thinking.
• It may form the basis for practice in proofreading and/or editing.

The teacher's prompt may also be loosely structured (as in the example shown in the graphic) or contain strict guidelines. As an example of strict guidelines, consider this recasting of the prompt in the graphic:

Look at the photo. As you look at it, decide what the man seems to be doing.

When you have an idea of what the man is doing, write a reaction containing at least four sentences:

— In the first sentence, write what you think the man is doing and provide a connection to the other sentences that you will write.
— Follow the first sentence with at least two more sentences that explain why you think that the man is _____ .
— End with a sentence that "achieves closure" and clearly shows that you are finished.

NB: Most teacher prompts are less strictly structured than the above.

The structure(s) outlined above are most commonly used for writing practice, but students could also respond aurally.

When you comment, follow the directions given in the graphic ("In the photo, what is the man doing? Tell us your ideas.").

Something Extra: The graphic was originally used in a kind of participative activity that permitted students to respond aurally and/or in writing. If you'd like to try the activity in this form (and also see how it actually worked), click HERE.

Instead of making one long reflective post on the above topic, I thought I'd break the post up into several (probably three) parts.

Here's the first:

Announcement-Page Blogs

I've seen a lot of class blogs, and have noticed that they can be grouped into several categories depending on how teachers use them.

One use is as an announcement page.

When teachers use blogs for this purpose, they are actually creating a static Web 1.0 website because the focus is entirely on providing information, not on reaction, interaction, or collaboration (and, in fact, in many class blogs set up in this manner, the comment feature is actually disabled) . Although this isn't like the kinds of blogs we're creating in WT4E, I think blogs of this type serve a useful purpose—the most important of which is that they provide a way for students to retrieve important class-focused news when they're not with their teacher and schoolmates—for example, from Net-connected computers elsewhere at the school, at home, in public libraries, or even at a cybercafe. What's more, the teacher who has one or more blogs like this doesn't have to pay hosting fees for her or his own website (which can get expensive).

Here are a few things that are commonly found in website-like announcement blogs:

• statements of class policies;
• information on where to find students' grades;
• notices about when the school will be closed, when the teacher will be absent, or when special activites are scheduled;
• regularly-posted homework assignments
• links (to websites, photos, sound files, quizzes, etc.) that students can use as supplements to other course materials.

NB: The graphic shown at the beginning of this post (a fake, not from an actual blog) doesn't have an assignment. The actual assignment could be any of the items above or something similar but different.

I've very often seen class blogs with contents like the above on public school websites in the U.S. They're usually pretty "plain vanilla"—few graphics except (sometimes) the teacher's photo, and no embedded videos or fancy formatting. That's appropriate, I think, since the purpose of this type of blog is simply (as I said before) to provide essential information.

For more information on blogs like this, see this link:

Use of Blogs in the Classroom

This YouTube video is both fun and informative. I hope you enjoy it!

Here are my thoughts on Carla's Week 3 Reflection Questions.

1. How can online social bookmarking help you?
2. What are the advantages of having bookmarking as a social activity?

Making use of social bookmarking can help me (and anyone who is always on the lookout for quality online resources) in several ways. Here, off the top of my head, are a few:

— Social bookmarking can save me time.

One great advantage of social bookmarking is that it provides a means for quick access to the results of resource searches that others have already done, so I don't have to start from ground zero every time I'm looking for thoughts on a particular topic. If I have to start from scratch when I'm looking for a particular kind of information, sifting through the enormous number of search-engine listings on almost any topic can be extraordinarily time-consuming.

— Social bookmarking provides a way of "filtering" resource searches.

Another advantage of social bookmarking is that you can look at what trusted sources (organizations, groups, colleagues) have selected as worthy of bookmarking. This not only saves time but also provides "endorsement" from sources whose judgment I respect and trust.

— Social bookmarking can provide more than a list of links.

Links lists, especially from sources that I respect and trust (for example, the Internet TESL Journal or E.L. Easton) are immensely valuable, but all too often these lists provide no more than a clickable URL. Some social bookmarking venues (such as Diigo) also make it possible to  include comments on resources and to group them into folders.

— Social bookmarking provides an easy-to-manage way of sharing resources.

If I want to share resources with a group of colleagues and don't use a social bookmarking venue, my only recourse is either to let my colleagues know individually about my group of links or send a list of links via an e-mail distribution list.

— Social bookmarking makes it unneccessary to have a website which houses my own link collection.

Years ago, I put two topically arranged link collections online. One was called A Basic ESOL Webliography; it was part of a website that I manage for the Arizona state affiliate of TESOL and focused on sites Arizona ESL teachers were interested in. The other was called Dennis' ESL/EFL Online Learning Resources; it was intended primarily for my own students. The webliography is no longer online because it was very large (more than 300 links in 29 separate categories) and difficult to keep up to date. The other links list has for the most part outlived its usefulness because I'm no longer teaching, so I also plan to take it offline very soon.

3. How could Diigo be used in your classroom?

If I were still teaching, most of my classes would certainly have an online component, and I would do at least one of the following:

— I'd use Diigo to uncover sources of supplemental content and activities and either access those sources during class time or ask the students to access them as a homework assignment (or part of one).

— If I used Blackboard (the online learning platform favored at my last place of employment) for a class, I'd include a page of links related to the class content and ask students (either working individually or in groups) to add to it. If they uncovered quality links that I didn't know about, I'd share those links via Diigo (or, in some classes, show the students how to do so).

— If I were teaching a "hybrid" class (one presented partially online and partially face to face), I'd use Diigo to enrich my own link list and, for some classes, ask students to submit their own links via Diigo.

— I'd include Diigo links on my faculty home page (probably separating those links either by content area or by class).

4. What were your main difficulties in getting started with social bookmarking?

My main difficulty was mostly due to changing established habits. Like everyone who spends time looking for online resources, I got in the habit early on of bookmarking interesting sites as I found them, but only on my one of my computers and only in one browser. This was useful enough in the beginning, but my lists of bookmarks and "favorites" gradually grew to be very large, and finding resources on those lists began to take longer and longer, especially if I had to change computers or browsers. In time, I began moving individual links into folders, and that helped, but finding bookmarked items was still time-consuming, especially if I had bookmarked only URLs with no descriptive information.

Those difficulties, incidentally, continue!

Another difficulty—or perhaps limitation would be a better word—was that my resources were only available to me or, if I'd put them on my website or shared them via e-mail or during an online text-chat session, to people whom I knew and was in contact with. In a way, that's OK; there are some things that I'd just as soon not share with everyone. I see the value of collaboration and sharing, however, and keeping what I'd found private or available only on a restricted basis was limiting my contribution.

Yet another difficulty was (and is) checking Diigo regularly. Joining Diigo groups is a good thing because membership in such groups means that I'm notified automatically when someone has added to a group's collection of links. Automatic notification is very convenient, but I don't always want (or have time) to check the new bookmarks. Besides, it's just one more thing to do!

I do, however, have a Diigo account and I've also added resources to the WT4E group's collection. If you can't find my Diigo folders on the WT4E Diigo site, go HERE.

5. Did you find any interesting resources to share with your peers? If so, please add a link.

One interesting resource is the Wikipedia article on Social Bookmarking. You can access it by clicking HERE.

I also found a fun (and informative) YouTube video. I'll embed it as a separate entry.

I'm excited to be part of another Web Tools for Educators class. I entered late, so I'm struggling a bit to get up to speed with the weekly content and activities, but I'm enjoying the class very much. The participants are very active and have already made many very thought-provoking obserations and created some amazing online content. I'm thoroughly enjoying being part of this journey of discovery, learning, and sharing.

I had to become inactive the last time I participated in WT4E, but that won't happen this time.

I greatly look forward to continuing the ride!

5-13-09

It's good to be part of Carla Arena's Web Tools for Educators class again. I look forward to the people I'll meet and to the new things I'll learn in the class.

It was also good to see José Antônio among the WT4E participants. I always enjoy working with him.

Carla asked six reflection questions. Here are they are, plus my responses. I'm not teaching now, so my responses are based on what I did in the recent past.

1. How do your students learn?

I had different types of students. They were of different ages (from teenagers to senior citizens, but mostly from around 18 to the mid-20s), and they came from a variety of countries (for the most part, but not entirely, from Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas). They also had different educational backgrounds: most had finished high school, but some had technical training or advanced professional degrees. They wanted to improve their English for primarily one of two reasons: most simply wanted to get a better job or be able to handle their affairs without the help of a translator, but anted to take academic-credit courses or pass a professional-level exam here in the U.S. The majority of my students were motivated to learn, but they had different understandings of what learning meant, and almost all were literate (sometimes highly so) in their native languages. Their familiarity with computers ranged from almost nonexistent to skilled, but most were not technophobic. In addition, I primarily taught grammar and writing classes, and this certainly affected learning modes: these classes required a lot of reading, thinking, writing, and aural processing of information. I also taught special classes in pronunciation (which focused primarily on listening and speaking, of course). 

My students displayed a variety of learning preferences. Some seemed primarily to be visual-verbal learners and related best to diagrams, charts, and written examples. Others appeared to be mostly aural learners and preferred the spoken word—either comments from me or recorded interviews or conversations. Still others displayed characteristics of logical learners who seemed to want an organized, systematic presentation of ideas. A few seemed to be what I would call creative / chaotic learners whose mental processing didn't "follow straight lines." Further, my students tended to be social / interpersonal learners who related well to being part of a class and enjoyed working in pairs or groups, but some favored solitary / intrapersonal activities and would probably have been happier working one-on-one rather than with others.

I also tried to vary my teaching practices. I tried to keep a balance of serious and fun activities, for example, and I moved around in class (from the front of the class to other parts of the room, from addressing the group to speaking with individual students). I also used a variety of activities during each class period—for example, presenting key information then asking for examples from students, having the students work from models, using dictatations. In addition, I used different presentation tools (whiteboard / blackboard, overhead projector, cassette / CD player, LCD projector, charts) and media (PowerPoint, recordings, computer-based exercises). I tried always to include both individual and group work in my class sessions and had oral, aural, and written work in all of my classes. My homework also varied: I used written and picture-based exercises (both from our coursebooks and ones I had created myself), different types of extended written work (paragraphs, essays, journals, notebooks, articles for class books and newspapers). Finally, most of my students' homework was completed on an individual basis, but some was presented by groups of students.

2. How much tech-richness does your curriculum provide?
3. How are you using the WWW to teach your students?

I was fortunate, in the last two places where I worked (a university-based program and a community college), to have access to technology. At the university (Arizona State University), most of the classrooms had an instructor's computer (often with Internet access) and there was also a "computing commons" with a huge number of Net-connected computers that students could use. At the community College (Estrella Mountain CC), there was also a kind of "computing commons" that all students could use. In addition, all of the older classrooms at the college had a Net-connected instructor's computer and wireless-equipped laptops that could be reserved and delivered for use in class, and the newer classrooms had both an instructor's computer and student laptops (all Net-accessible). Moreover, both the university and the community college had instructional technology departments who helped teachers develop materials and learn to use equipment.

At both ASU and EMCC, I used my own computer to develop both hard-copy materials (exercises, models, syllabi, notes) and online materials (personal web page with sections for each of my classes, class web pages, link lists). At the community college, I used Blackboard (an online course management platform) for many of my classes, and developed and taught one grammar class in "hybrid" (blended online and face-to-face) mode. I required that most of my student "compositions" (paragraphs, essays) and that all of their research papers be word-processed, and I made sure that students knew the difference between the conventions of keyboarding and typewriting. I also bought my first digital camera in the mid-1990s and used it (and two other cameras that I bought later) to post student photos and record student activities. Finally, I helped students enrich their individual study through providing links to online materials that supplemented our work in class, and in class, I also used Randall Davis' ESL Cyber Listening Lab, portions of Dave Sperling's ESL Cafe on the Web, online exercises and quizzes by Charles Kelley ("Many Things"), and other online materials (including some I had created myself) for both supplemental audio and text materials. Finally, I began working with blogs during the last two years that I taught; one blogging project (done with Carlinha and her students at "Thomas" in Brasília) worked quite well.

4.  How do we turn our 21st Century classrooms into learning engines?

I think we can turn our 21st Century classrooms into "learning engines" by

a. making sure our students are properly oriented to computer-mediated learning (searching, bookmarking, navigating, using headphones / headphone sets, recording on removable media, uploading and downloading materials, registering for online venues (like moodles, Ning pages, blogs, wikis), remembering and / or saving passwords, knowing the difference between keyboarding and typewriting, knowing how to select by clicking and/or using pull-down and scroll-over menus;

b. including online materials which are similar to what students who use computers (not all do!) are familiar with—things that are something like Orkut, FaceBook, MySpace;

c. knowing how to find, navigate, and work with online materials that we expect our students to use;

d. including and keeping a balance between both WWW-based and face-to-face activities (unless our classes are 100% online);

e. making sure that we have both individual and group activities (yes, more than one student can use a single computer) and that we as teachers are facilitating and collaborating, not constantly directing what and when and how things are to be done;

f. ensuring that when students are working on computers in class, we don't simply mark papers or otherwise separate ourselves from what the class is doing, but, instead, that we make a practice of involving ourselves in the learning process—for example, by moving around the room to see what works and what doesn't, answering questions, giving encouragement, and providing assistance (either providing it ourselves or by asking another student to help);

g. making sure that online materials that we assign for homework or choose to work with in class are still available (not shut down for repairs, not dead links);

h. knowing what to do if a computer "freezes" or crashes or if other problems occur;

i. making sure that we leave time to shut down computers properly when an online activity has finished;

j. making sure that we always have an alternate plan in case there are network or electrical problems;

k. including activities that are fun as well as serious (we can learn from both)!

5. Are you engaging your students?

I always tried to engage my students, but the truth is, I sometimes did and I sometimes didn't. Part of the time, lack of engagement was because of the students (no sleep the night before, worry about a sick child, bad news from family living outside the U.S., car / money / rent / job problems, and so on), but part of the time the lack of engagement was from me (lack of sleep, problems at home, difficulty with allergies, dwelling on something negative a colleague had said, not being able to use materials I'd spent hours creating, etc.)

True student engagement is never easy to accomplish. It requires sensitivity to the needs of each student and awareness of the constantly-changing atmosphere of the class as a whole, adequate planning and "choreography," the ability to look beyond one particular class and see what must be accomplished "down the road," energy, compassion, a certain amount of acting ability, self confidence, the willingness to realize that one's own personal background and preferences may be quite different from those of one's students (whose backgrounds and preferences are also important), and many other qualities and skills.

The important thing, it seems to me, is realizing that engagement is a critically necessary component of "learning engines": the more our students are engaged, the more they will learn . . . and the more satisfying, meaningful, and personally useful their learning experiences will be

6. What are your main barriers to incorporating technology into your classroom

I had many barriers to incorporating technology into my classes. Here are some of them:

a. varied familiarity with computers (from computer-phobic to computer-savvy) among students;

b. malfunctioning equipment (sometimes because systems or networks were down, sometimes because I forgot to adjust a particular setting, sometimes because whoever used a classroom before me forgot to log out and I couldn't make changes in this or that because the previous person's settings were not the same as mine, sometimes from things as simple as a plug or connector that was loose, sometimes other reasons);

c. support staff who weren't always available (the AV Techs were wonderful at my last job, but sometimes they could drop everything and come in to help with a problem, and at other times they couldn't fix the problem until hours or days after the problem occurred);

d. school policies on use of technology (in general, my last two workplaces encouraged use of technology and provided plenty of help and support, but some things were tightly controlled—for example, using BlackBoard as the only online learning platform and specifying that "blended" classes would follow a single scheduling option for each week of class—one 1.5-hour F2F session, plus at least 1.5 hours of classwork to be done online);

e. not having access to some of the equipment that I needed or wanted (for example, a notebook PC, a digital whiteboard, digital voice recorders, a graphics tablet, a class polling system);

f. not having enough time to develop materials and learn to use new and interesting applications;

g. my own tendency to stress out when problems developed and I didn't, immediately, know how to solve them;

h. students who forgot their log-on usernames and passwords almost every time we used computers in class;

i. students (and some faculty???) who thought that online learning was not serious learning;

j. having to work mostly with PCs even though I prefer to use a Mac;

k. not having enough time to do particular tech-based activities (and still have enough time for students to properly log off and shut down before they have to leave the classroom);

l. sometimes being unwilling to let go of my "teacher as expert" persona and admit that I didn't know how to do something (frequently one or more students understood how to do things on a computer or how to work with specific applications better than I did);

m. sometimes being unable to relax and inject a heady dose of fun and ginga into what went on in class (which, of course, led to stress and further problems with equipment and procedures);

. . . . and I could say more.

____________________________________________________________________

I'm happy to add, however, that I found (sometimes "inside my own head," sometimes through advice from others) solutions or alternative courses of action for all or nearly all of what I listed above . . . so I firmly believe that most, if not all, barriers can be surmounted. I also believe that every problem is actually a learning opportunity.

   My personal thoughts this week are two-pronged and involve two areas:
— the WT4E participants and class
— teaching and learning à la Web 2.0.

The WT4E Participants and Class

These snippets (all have positive values to me) come to mind about the participants: fascinating, varied backgrounds / social / interested in interacting / interested in learning / nice people / different personalities / different learning styles / different levels of committment / welcoming of newcomers to their individual circle of friends and colleagues / high degree of fluency in English / . . . . and much more.

Snippets on the class: interesting content / varied activities and resources / focuses on enabling collaboration and sharing / fosters learning by doing / definitely dynamic, not static / multiple venues for feedback and communication / multiple opportunities to create / not exclusivistic / not dry and (traditionally) academic / . . . and much more

Teaching and Learning à la Web 2.0.

The resources (videos and excerpts from blogs and/or websites) were very thought-provoking but also a bit evangelistic. In addition, the startling statistics that were presented downplay those who are, for a variety of reasons, digitally impoverished. It's clear that the educational establishment and all who are part of it must re-think and re-tool to reach wired students, but there are students (maybe mainly adults) who fall through the cracks because they expect all their learning to take place in a physical classroom at a definite time. If they are balancing raising a family, working full-time, being a spouse, and being a student and WATCHING THEIR BUDGET, they may not be able to do what younger learners routinely do.

Also, even if we are committed to the challenges set forth in the resources, do we all have the freedom to implement what is suggested? After all, we may work in situations where the curriculum is prescribed, specific (and very limited) outcomes are expected, and anything new or innovative is greeted with suspicion.

Whatever, Wherever, Whenever: YES!

However, we can't completely overthrow the status quo; instead, we have to work within it and change it gradually, it seems to me.