I began using blogs last summer for a class I took online, I thought it was out of my hands but actually it ended up being pretty easy. I see there is a direct connection between this CALL class and writing a blog, so I'm actually going to enjoy this activity.
I used to hate journals (and still do) and free writing ... it may be just the format because there is no big difference between them and a blog, but I'm beginning to see the benefits of writing in teaching. Actually I'm employing this idea into my Spanish class, the only change I made was that I let students choose whether to write a journal (paper version) or a blog (digital version). I find this choice more fair to students and it suits better their diverse learning styles. So far I have half of my students keeping blogs and half of them writing.
It was pretty need to learn in this first week that there is a way to blog from Word document. I just noticed the space provided in here does not check on spelling automatically, so using word doccument will help me and students to produce more accurate texts. I will try this new feature in my next blog.
Something new I wanted to add has to do with the multiple languages choice that Blogger provides. This is being helpful for my students since I want then to be surrounded by Spanish, so when they blog, and set the language to Spanish, they find all the features in the target language and that is extra practice for them. So I strongly suggest, if you decide to use Blogger in your classes, to have your students set the language to the target language they are to learn.
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