Here is the second step of the SFL blogspace event #2.

It's great to see the comments and feedback about the Campbell reading. Looks like those of us in IED might like to try the Tutor Blog idea, whereas MLD students might be ready for their own learner blogs. Actually, for MLD teachers, the blog has even more advantages as Nilgun points out, in that teachers often only see the students 3 or 4 hours a week, so blogging could be a much better medium to develop a rapport with individual students and classes. The point about saving on spam is a good one--and one wouldn't have to repeat the same message over and over again for students that missed a class.

Perhaps the SFL could consider blogging as part of the IED-MLD continuum...introduce blogs to students in IED so that MLD teachers can build on this experience in their courses???

In fact, if students started to build their own individual blog in IED, it would serve as a permanent 'e-folio' (thanks to Elmaziye for the term and the concept) so that their subsequent teachers in IED and MLD could actually have a convenient history of their development in English--true...we can see their grades in the portal...but test results don't really give the true and personal perspective of a student. The head of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at an MLD meeting once suggested having some kind of portfolio of each student's development in English throughout their academic career. Perhaps a blog could function as this....something to think about...in fact, it might be most gratifying for parents to have the opportunity to see how their children are doing as well. It might be a huge motivational factor to students if they knew that their parents would be popping in to see how they were doing (and what their teacher was saying about them???) And students might actually benefit by seeing how much they themselves have progressed through a reflection on their blog archive.

Blogs and writing....a new twist on an old idea??

Anyway, Steve was offline all day today due to a 10 hour power cut in Karsiyaka, and asked me to get you to move from the general to the specific...in particular, a very practical account of how one teacher used blogs in a writing class. Now it's time to have a look at a specific example of Creating a Writing Course Utilizing Class and Student Blogs by Andrew Johnson.

Again, as we've done with the general blogging concepts of Campbell, keep in mind our own EMU context when you read this. Do you think this approach would work with our students, either in IED or MLD? Could it be adapted, or is there a variant that might work better here. Also, and Seval will be glad to hear this, Johnson actually gives a very detailed step-by-step description of setting up blogs in, you guessed it, http://blogger.com. He gives some pretty useful tips.

Blogvanity in blogosphere

If you have some time after reading Johnson's article, pop along to a TESL 'Bloglog' of EFL teachers, visit a few and see if there are any that you would recommend to us as good example of what to do (or what NOT to do!!!). Post your comments in this blog and check out what others have had to say. Remember, you can add comments to individual postings if you want to.

Coming up next week...

Next week will be our last 'input' session and we'll delve into the features of weblogs, and how we can tailor them to our needs, and the needs of our students. There are almost twenty of us in the workshop, so we'll probably end up with twenty different approaches, but that is really what blogs are all about--individuality and creatively. We could end up starting a blogplode (blog and explode) here.

# posted by Cigdem @ 3:52 AM