Campbell talked about three different kinds of blogs. The tutor blog is a new idea to me, but sincerely I don't think it would really work since most tutors are seen as temporal teachers or answers to questions. This semester I began using the learner blog with my class of Spanish, and since the objective is for my students to free write in the target language, there hasn't been much reflection on the class or showing of their feelings. I haven't asked them to read each others entries and comment on them, I will do so next week since it is already midterm, I hope students will enjoy and learn more this way, so far this activity is plain.
KEY PALS
Chapter 5 (Szendeffy) explained about exchange of letters through Internet, which is an idea I tried a couple of times in my own classes, but I categorized of too much for a teacher. The chapter addressed every issue I encountered while trying to set up key pals to my EFL class, and it also presented possible solutions. However I still think there are so many buts in doing this activity, and I don't feel like venturing into it again. The hardest part, as pointed by the book, is to assign key pals and have the communicate frequently. When I tried this idea I was working with adolescents, so I didn't think of sending them to find a key pal by themselves; with adults this task may be difficult, nevertheless I rather have everybody use the same source. Once I even tried to use some of my friends as key pals to my students, but even them were not consistent and my students got disappointed. The idea itself sounds great and it excites students, the deal is to make it work.
A FIELD GUIDE TO CROSS-CULTURAL PROJECTS
This short article presented some tangible samples of what a cultural project could look like. I searched the site (CultureQuest) and found lots of practical guidelines for teachers who want to be part of the project, or just want to use them as a way to shape their own project. What I found more valuable about this page was the fact of integrating culture and teaching with the help of technology. Culture is one of the 5 cs American schools are to address in teaching, but more than that, culture is an essential part of learning any language.
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3 comments:
I would be curious to know what your students think about commenting to their classmates' blogs.
I agree with Dr Smidt: What DO your students think about blogging?
I will ask that question on Monday, my intention will be to survey how many of them feel comfortable with commenting, then I will ask them all to do it once a week.
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