Assignment tracking December 9, 2007
Posted by Captain in blog features.Tags: lesson ideas, trackback
8 comments
Tracking students assignment could be nightmare. With trackback feature, a teacher will be notified when students’ work are posted on their own blogs. For example, A is reading B’s blog and and found it interesting. While A writes his blog, he refers to B’s Blog using trackback. He puts the trackback link in his post so B will be notified that his post is referred by someone else. It is a link between two blogs and also an acknowlegement to the original writer.
For example, a teacher can set a writing task on the teacher’s own blog and asks students to write their posts on their students’ own blogs as assignment and trackback to the teacher’s original post. The teacher can check his post to see if any students have done the work. It’s that easy.
Curriculum integration idea: Free writing December 9, 2007
Posted by Captain in Blog2teach ideas, Sample educational blogs, Teaching ideas, curriculum integration.Tags: curriculum integration, free writing, lesson ideas
14 comments
Creative writing / Free writing
A picture is more than a thousand words. The multimedia rich nature of blog is particular powerful when it comes to stimulate writing ideas and inspire students to write. Teachers can easily post a picture to stimulate the thought of students. In the following blog post, a picture is used to stimulate students and write. Writing tasks such as free writing and writing the ending of story can be easily integrated in a blog.
Curriculum integration: News Comment on a blog December 9, 2007
Posted by Captain in Sample educational blogs, Teaching ideas, curriculum integration.Tags: curriculum integration, lesson ideas, News
13 comments
Newspaper cutting
Traditionally, newspaper cutting requires students physically cut and paste the newspaper article on their assignment. If you ask students to write news comments using their blogs, they can write their feedback, comments in the blog. Here is an example. The link of the newspaper article is also shown in the same post. You can embed the news link and paste to your blog and start commenting on it. A lot of online newspaper (MingPao) and websites (Yahoo HK) offer instant news blogging function. You can click the blog button at the end of the news and blog right away.
Students can keep all their work in a blog nicely and tidily. They will not lose it again and it will become their learning portfolio.
Discussion
What are other advantages of doing news review using blogs?
curriculum integration idea : Group writing June 11, 2007
Posted by Captain in Blog2teach ideas, Teaching ideas, curriculum integration.Tags: curriculum integtion, group writing, lesson ideas
5 comments
Group writing
Have you tried group collaborative writing with your class? Probably, you know writing as a group has advantages like creating more ideas and promote peer learning. Having a group of students writing on the same topic can promote peer interaction. A blog can also serve as a platform for writing group blog. Multiple users can write on the same blog at the same time. Currently, blogger and wordpress support group authoring function. Students write in the group writing blog can read their peer’s work and comment on others’ writing.
This is particularly good for community based writing.
Here is an example how multi users can write on a single blog. The example is a group blog of WebHeads. They are a group of international English teachers who share a passion on using IT in their teaching. They attended a TESOL convention in Seattle, 2007. They use this group to share and communicate with each other. What is interesting about a group blog is that different people can post, edit and comment freely on the same blog. It is a truely collaborative environment. Although the topic is not about teaching but still you can see how different writers can post their articles on the same blog.
Discussion Questions:
What is a group blog good for?
What application can we use ?
Is there any project possibility with this group blog function?
Using blog as a learning activity 1 (reading comprehension) June 11, 2007
Posted by Captain in Blog2teach ideas, Sample educational blogs, curriculum integration.Tags: ciurriculum integartion, lesson ideas, reading comprehension
4 comments
Reading and writing activity
Reading comprehesion is one of the common learning tasks in English classrooms. English teachers assign reading articles and reading activities to students.
Bee in her blog presented a way to use a blog as a reading activity. She linked of newspaper sites in the post ( Rare drop in gun deaths in Brazil, from BBC) as reading materials and asked students to complete a list of tasks after reading. She provided instructions for the reading activity. Background information of the issue and task instruction are given in the blog post. This activity design resembles a conventional reading comprehension activity.
Discussion Question:
Is this kind of blogging activity suitable for your students? Why or why not?
