blog-efl

BlogMeister is another new weblogging tool. It is aimed specifically at teachers and their students. What makes BlogMeister unique is that student publications must be reviewed by the teacher before they can be made public. I got the link from Stephen Downes

Things have been very quiet around here lately (for various reasons), but I promise they'll pick up again soon. If not in December, then in the New Year. Meanwhile, I'd like to invite all EFL Bloggers to join the TESOL Electronic Village 2005 session : Click to join weblogging Watch this space for further details.

An interesting thread has opened up on Open Brackets , a weblog dedicated mainly to translation: "French employees will accuse a US multinational in court today of discrimination, claiming that they are being forced to speak English. [...] “We think that employees should have the right to understand the instructions they’re given and to follow what is being said in meetings.” The staff say it is not a question of national pride, but of discrimination. They claim that people have been denied promotion because they speak poor English, and that those who protest are accused of rejecting the company’s ethos."

Google Scholar "Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web."

I haven't had time to take a look at this yet - Jotspot - so I can't vouch for it, but my brother recommends it. At the moment, they are accepting registrations for beta trials.

I must admit that I came late to RSS and Bloglines , but now that I've discovered what it can do for me, I wouldn't like to live without it. If you haven't discovered it yet, try rerading Alex Halavais' article about what it can do for you and give it a try. Thanks to Stephen Downes for the tip.

ADE Bloggers is a collaborative blog that has a nice summary of why a teacher might want to use blogging tools. Here's an extract: "You might like to create a reflective, journal type blog to... reflect on your teaching experiences. keep a log of teacher-training experiences. write a description of a specific teaching unit. describe what worked for you in the classroom or what didn't work. provide some teaching tips for other teachers. write about something you learned from another teacher. explain teaching insights you gain from what happens in your classes. share ideas for teaching activities or language games to use in the classroom. provide some how-to's on using specific technology in the class, describing how you used this technology in your own class. explore important teaching and learning issues." There are other answers relating to class weblogs, learner weblogs, shared weblogs, etc...

The Report Card is a blog-rant by an anonymous teacher who doesn't sound too happy with the school he works at. Here's an example: "MrTeacher: 'You've got to be kidding!' YS: 'I'm not.' MrT: 'My class is six weeks away from a major exam [that they have paid €150 for], and you want a teacher who has never prepared anyone for the exam to teach them, just because she's afraid of driving on the motorway? She can take backroads. I'll find her a route on the map!' YS: 'She can't do it. I'VE RIDDEN WITH HER! She's way too nervous. She'll crash the car.' MrT: 'SHE CAN GO ON THE BACKROADS.' YS: 'NO SHE CAN'T. IT'S TOO FAR FOR HER TO DRIVE' MtT: 'HOW IS THAT MY CLASS' PROBLEM ? This isn't fair to them. I'm going to call Bossman.' YS: 'Go ahead.'"

I've yet to try this out, but Blogbox.com offers "free, open-source rich internet applications for your personal website, wiki or blog" What I've seen looks good, so I'll be coming back here to try some of these widgets out!

Claude Covo-Farchi at http://covonline.com/ has a very colourful blog that will be of interest to many. There are lots of links to ESL sites, and many other snippets that could be used with classes.

Hong Kong English teacher : "I would like my students to have perfect English. I would like them to be able to write in a variety of styles to meet different requirements, to be able to write complex interesting sentences that are not filled with errors. I would like them to be able to take part in discussions, to be able to argue their points forceably and coherently in English, to be able to give fluent presentations without pronunciation errors, and to be able to converse in English naturally and confidently. I know this is not going to happen. It is unrealistic. I can have an ideal though." This self-reflective weblog makes interesting reading - it's another good example of a practising teacher using a weblog to reflect upon teaching, etc.

"Flush out the writer in children. Blogging could draw out a young writer and open doors to their future." So says Sharon Housley in the post Blogs for Kids at RSS Specifications . Sharon goes on to describe the benefits that blogging can have for children. Althoughnot aimed at an ELT audience, this post is obviously of interest to YL teachers thinking of blogging with their classes, or those who already do so.

Jason Ward has an article in the TEFL Web Journal entitled 'Blog Assisted Language Learning: Push button publishing for the pupils. Jason talks about the benefits that blogging can have in the reading and writing classes. The article speaks mainly of the advantages of using blogs. Under shortcomings, Jason mentions that students could be exposed to some 'questionable readings' and that it could also have 'a detrimental effect on reading, writing and confidence.' The danger, it seems is that reading by scrolling a computer screen can lead to a 'superficial and often inaccurate, understanding of the content, and that sloppy writing can result from blogging. Jason also mentions that the commenting feature of weblogs can lead to confidence being undermined if students receive criticism from others. All the more important, therefore, to ensure that blogging with students is controlled? Perhaps by restricting the commenting feature of student weblogs

George Siemens at Elearnspace has written an article (complete with useful mindmap)about the different categories of e-learning. Blogs are included in the diagram, grouped together with wikis and 'groove' under the 'collaborative tools' branch. Other categories include courses, informal learning, blended learning, communities, networked learning, and workplace learning.

Many-to-Many is a group weblog concerned with social software. It's definitely worth taking a look at. From there, the first thing I jumped to was Adina Levin's BookBlog , which has a great discussion on what's new and who's doing what in social software.

I have started to blog with this year's ERASMUS students, who are over in Barcelona until Christmas. I have them for a class on Catalan Culture, introducing them to the culture and history of Catalonia (and how this is similar to / different from Spanish culture). Last year I set up a class weblog for this group, and although the experience was positive, and some of the students continued blogging there after the course, I found that having just one weblog between 25 students made it difficult to keep track of what everyone was saying. I also used the weblog as a way of grading them, and it was not easy to evaluate as all posts were on one site. Finally, I asked them to set up an account, and there were problems (with students forgetting passwords and user names). so, having learned from my mistakes, I set up a class weblog for the group here: http://catalanculture.blogspot.com and also individual learner weblogs, linked to the class weblog. I actually set up all the acc

Bernie Dodge compiled this chart for use during his EDTEC Saturday Seminars on Motivating Student Writing with Weblogs. On the site you can find a course overview, an outline and resources.

I've just been introduced (by Bee) to Web Collaborator , which omtegrates a blogging tool. It looks like a really exciting and useful tool,and I'm looking forward to trying it out. Here's what they say about the blog bit: " Discussion Through Blogging The discussion section of any collaboration is done in a blog. Descending from the words 'web log', a blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. Postings on a blog are arranged in chronological order with the most recent additions at the top. A blog is a perfect arena for discussions where you can attribute who is saying what and when they said it. This allows a group of people to focus on certain parts of a collaboration. For example, if I noticed that a paper we were working on needed more citations, I might say so in the blog. It is the first page people see when they come into a project, so any news of interest that might be inappropriate inside the project should go there. "

Contentious Link-Only (Basic Blog Post Formats, Part 1) : "This is part 1 of a 7-part series that describes the main types of blog posting formats." and more "News and musings on how we communicate in the online age" By AMY GAHRAN.

Aaron Patric Campbell writes: "I recently wrote a short piece for the Internet TESL journal describing how I added an experiential element to my EFL reading/writing classes last spring through the use of Livejournal. Students wrote weekly and were able to interact with the peers from abroad in the target language. It was educational and fun for everyone involved. The paper is entitled, Using Livejournal for Authentic Communication in EFL Classes ."

I've been following some links on docendodiscimus , a weblog run by Peter Williams with content of interest to EFL teachers. One link led to an interview at Weblogs in Education with Will Richardson, whose weblog Weblogg-ed.com is a great source of information for educators who want to use weblogs. In the interview, Will says that "From a teaching standpoint," weblogs are perhaps best used as "online classroom portals, discussion sites, filing cabinets for handouts and syllabi, collaboration spaces and personal portfolios." He also thinks "the easiest place to start is to use the Weblog as a homepage for a class to post homework assignments, links, discussion questions."

Thanks to Stephen Downes for this: It seems that someone has turned his gmail account into blog authoring software . There followed a discussion on Slashdot that caused such a commotion that the gmail blog was turned off, but the author plans to reinstate it once the fuss has died down. There's a lot of interest related to Google's gmail accounts because of the space they provide for free (1GB), the organisational aspects, search facilities, and akso the anti-spam element. I have been trying out gmail and I am very impressed with it. Unfortunately, it's in a beta (testing) phase and is open to new members by invitation only. However, I have lots of invitations, so if anyone wants one, just leave a comment on this post and I'll send you an invite.

Eastgate Tinderbox: the tool for notes may be an interesting option for Mac users looking for a sophisticated weblogging tool (and more. Here's what they say about it: "Tinderbox is a personal content management assistant. It stores your notes, ideas, and plans. It can help you organize and understand them. And Tinderbox helps you share ideas through Web journals and web logs." It's not free, however.

:: t e k t o n i c a :: : "mo:Blog is a mobile blogging tool for PalmOS devices. With mo:Blog you can post new messages to most blogging applications. It even allows you to upload binary files - like images - to blogs that support this. "

The nymber of articles on blogging in education increases every day. Here are two more I came acros: Exploring the use of blogs in the higher education sector is an article from the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, and When Blogging Goes Bad: A Cautionary Tale About Blogs, Emailing Lists, Discussion, and Interaction is an essay showing a different point of view. There's a discussion of this essay at Kairosnews , "a weblog for discussing rhetoric, technology and pedagogy."

Furl - The Aaron Campbell Personal Webpublishing Research Archive is a good place to start looking for articles about blogging.

Dear Ai - Good advice for ESL Students seems to be a first - a weblog "agony aunt". Students are encouraged to write to Ai, and she answers their questions and gives advice about their problems about studying English in Vancouver.

TESL-EJ On the Internet: Diaries as introspective research tools : "This article reports on a study of the usefulness of a diary as a research tool conducted as a part of a Masters degree program in TEFL/TESL at Birmingham University, UK. The study analysed the efficacy of using blogs as a research tool compared to diaries, using the example of research in teacher use of motivation strategies, and found that blogs offer various possible advantages in the domain of action research."

what's the word, wiseguy? is a blog by John Kuti "about the cultural and linguistic gap between English and Russian, life in Saint Petersburg, teaching and learning languages." I got this link from John's blog: The history of CALL . I tried searching for 'weblog', but the search returned errors. I looked via the index but it seems there's nothing on weblogs yet. After all, it's a site about the past, I suppose, not the present.

http://www.questionpro.com/ isn't a blogging tool, but it may be of interest. It's "An Integrated online service for Building Surveys, Collecting Data, and Viewing Results in real time. Free for Academic and Research Organizations." Has anyone had experience of using this?

Stephen Downes has an article about a fictional history professor's attempts to introduce blogging : "The department chair murmurs, that's very interesting, but we haveour hands full with online courses. You need to start teaching and stop wasting time with these toys." Read on...

Once again, thanks to Jason for this link: Everything you wanted to know about blogging but were afraid to ask at Simon World . Simon's article is, as he says, not the first to deal with this subject, but it is well written, and he has some very good advice. I personally like the "Never get your brother to guest blog for you" bit. Intriguing, Simon. what happened?

Knock knock, who's there? is "A blog for all students, colleagues and anyone else who's interested in discussing the intricacies of the English language", run by a colleague of Jason's (see previous post). The site has started posting texts written by students.

http://y5r.motime.com/ is a new class blog created by Jason Reagin , a teacher in China. This is what he says about the new blogging experiment: "I have set up another 'motime' blog for my class. It is called Y5R (the name of my homeroom class). One of my main concerns all along has been that in order for my students to have their 'own' blog they would have to sign-up with a free service... If you have any suggestions about how I can solve this problem with the students not have an e-mail account please pass them along!" Can anyone offer help to Jason? You can find this entry and others at http://wjreagin.motime.com/ - it seems as if Blogger is blocked in China, and so he has set up a weblog with another provider.

The piece elise.com: On the Job: An Overview of the Weblog Tools Market by Elise Bauer gives a nice summary of the current situation with weblog tools. Of course, Blogger is the leader, with Livejournal following closely behind. More hosted services are mentioned in the article, as are weblog tools such as Wordpress , Drupal and Greymatter , which require installation on a local server, and so are normally more popular with more technically-minded bloggers. The article goes on to show perceived market share, and which tools attract which type of person.

Je blogue, et vous, vous bloguez? is a presentation that Barbara Dieu gave at Cyberlangues Colloquium in Sao Paolo last Wednesday August 25th. It's a very good introductory presentation (in French) to blogging, and in addition, includes the following links to innovative blogs that can be adapted for language learning: Buzznet is a sit for photo-blogging. You can see an example of a teacher using it here: Vance Stevens' photoblog Moblogging is a form ofg blogging by mobile. Again, an example can be seen here: Audio blogging. Barbara has some examples on her weblog Bee2online There are other example blogs given on Barabara's presentation, so be sure to check it out.

Stephen Downes has written an interesting Educational Blogging article in the Educase Review, "looking at the nature and history of blogging, educational applications, tools and technologies, trends, and early experiences in educational blogging." The example given at the beginning of the article reflects on an example weblog community with three different types of blogs being used by the students and teachers: "This virtual space is composed of three sets of weblogs, or blogs: a classroom Web space, where announcements are displayed and work of common interested is posted; a public, personal communication zone, where students post the results of their work or reflection; and a private personal space, reserved for students’ thoughts and teacher guidance." and the point of this is "to promote reflective analysis and the emergence of a learning community that goes beyond the school walls." There is a more detailed description of the workings of t

Three Reasons to Publish an E-Newsletter AND a Blog : This article is aimed at those involved in marketing, but it's still interesting to see how blogging continues to make headway as a way of communicating to people electronically.

COLIN PATON details a recent implementation of blogs in a Brazillian teacher training programme: "We have recently implemented the use of blogs on our training courses for teachers. We call these blogs 'reflective blogs' as we ask teachers to record their teaching practice through self observation and then reflect upon it. These blogs are kept on our Teacher's Portal and are open to all teachers to read and comment on."

Check out the ABC Blook on Blogging , brought to you by the Wrinkles Weblog Group

Finally, blogging has become a popular feature of British Council websites. After some previous trials, the British Council Glasgow conference for teachers (taking place this week) has four teachers blogging their observations and summaries of the presentations they attend (Sorry, but these sites are only available to British Council staff via their intranet), using typepad . This could become a regular feature of conference events - it's certainly a good way to bring the conference to those teachers who can't attend. It's true there are few comments to the posts on the weblog, but then a lot of teachers will be on holiday at the moment. I also found out that the Britsh Council community for exisitng students (Global Village, again not available to non-BC staff) is also to introduce weblogs to help improve the participation by students in this site. This is an interesting development as I proposed it when I was taking the excellent e-moderators course in September l

Usability News - 6.2 2004 -- Reading Online Text: A Comparison of Four White Space Layouts "In this study, reading performance with four white space layouts was compared. Margins surrounding the text and leading (space between lines) were manipulated to generate the four white space conditions. Results show that the use of margins affected both reading speed and comprehension in that participants read the Margin text slower, but comprehended more than the No Margin text."

trAce Online Writing Centre - Opinion : "To call blogs literature would be to turn them into an elitist, edited, and vetted art, one which is contrary to their very nature. The complexity of what blogs and their reactionary, perfectly contemporary, accessible prose could mean to the future of sustainable storytelling, to truth in journalism and to the survival of democracy, is too great to call literature."

Will Richardson's Power Point presentation can be found at this link: Weblogg-ed - Using Weblogs and RSS in Education The presentation provides a well-developed introduction to weblogs in education.

Helen Barrett's E-Portfolios for Learning Blog was set up to discuss "ideas on electronic portfolios to support lifelong learning"

The paper Creation of a learning landscape: weblogging and social networking in the context of e-portfolios by Ben Werdmuller of the University of Edinburgh argues that for the 'e-portfolio' system to be effective it needs to capture the enthusiam of online leraner and tutors. As learning is not a solitary pursuit, one way that this can happen is to learn from social networks such as Orkut , and weblogging communities ( livejournal being the example given). The learning experience, the paper argues, is enhanced and made more valuable by the participation and interaction of others. Thanks to Stephen Downes for the link.

EDUCAUSE REVIEW | July/August 2004,Volume 39, Number 4 : "We are still working toward a common definition for electronic portfolios, or ePortfolios.1 Ideally, all work in an electronic portfolio not only is digital but also is available on the Internet. Yet even though materials may be visible on the Web, the ePortfolio is not simply a personal home page with links to examples of work. In addition, unlike a typical application program, such as word processing, an ePortfolio is a network application that provides the author with administrative functions for managing and organizing work (files) created with different applications and for controlling who can see the work and who can discuss the work (access)."

e-Literate is a weblog about online learning.

I have just finished reviewing the results of a survey I gave to my students of 'Sound and Image' in the last computer class we had. The students were taking English as a subsidiary subject, as part of their Professional Studies diploma in 'Sound and Image'. A lot of these students go on to work in the world of TV, theatre, cinema, as photographers or in other audio-visual contexts when they finish their two year course. The English teachers' job is to help prepare them for this offering a mixture of general English and ESP. My class was upper-intermediate level. We had a computer class programmed every third week and I decided to introduce learner weblogs as a way for them to submit assignments and record the things we looked at in this class. As this was the first year we had regular computer room use and also the first time I had used weblogs consistently with a class, at the end of the course, I gave them a short questionnaire to see how they perceiv

At Edweblogs.org: NECC 2004 , there is an entry on Bernie Dodge's presentation about the evolution of webquests. It seems that one of the criticisms levelled at webquests is that they should be more interactive. Bernie himself has his students write blogs. He says he gets to know them better that way. There is more about his presentation here , hinting at how to integrate blogs and wikis into webquests.

Blogs and Wiki: WikiAndBlog Here's a succinct post about the difference between blogs and wikis.

ateacher has started a reflective blog at EFL summer school to comment "on classes at a summer school for young learners studying English in July 2004"

Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel have an interesting article about blogging and education, which was presented at a confference in Chicago, 2003, entitled: Do-It-Yourself Broadcasting: Writing Weblogs in a Knowledge Society In it, they outline a taxonomy of blogs, talk about the relationship between blogs and power, and mention the potential for blogs to become platforms for powerful writing if the author is encouraged to focus upon his/her point of view and identity. On the subject of school blogs, the authors are highly critical: "Many student posts to school-endorsed blogs look like being compulsory requirements and linked to student grades for the course. The lively humour and wit of blogger posts elsewhere and the written comments they often attract from readers are missing—few school blogs even have the “comments” function enabled. The quality of writing posted to school blogs varies from the “why bother” to lists of items pertaining to a subject area topic or t

This article by Cory Doctorow discusses blogging as an evolution of bookmarking, which is a link I'd never made before. As Cory says, "I used to bookmark this stuff, but I just ended up with a million bookmarks that I never revisited and could never find anything in."

I've mentioned this site before, but it's well worth listing again. Mandarin Design specialises in "Web and Blog Design and Development" and has easy tutorials for weblog oweners who are looking to add something special. It could even be used with students with blogs if you have a group interested in playing with the design.

Inge Anna Koleff of Austria has compiled a list of Weblogs or Blogs and related tools and articles as part of a seminar.

Planning pedagogy for i-mode : "It is often observed that a wide and widening gulf exists between the forms of literacy students engage in within school settings, and the manner in which they engage in them, and those they encounter in their worlds beyond school." In their article based on a conference presentation in Melbourne last year, Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel discuss the hows and whys of the above.mentioned statement, and what uses today's teenagers use the emerging technologies for. Amongst other things, they examine why in their experience emailing (which is so popular with teenagers outside of school) proved to be unpopular when used in school context. The article also discusses weblogs, and divides them into four types based on use: 1. Weblogs which are used to link to other sites and which include commentary. 2. Journal weblogs 3. Hybrids (journals, which also include links with commentary) 4. Meta weblogs (such as blog-efl) which are

Wink is a great freeware Tutorial and Presentation tool that could be used to create an online tutorial on how to blog (I suppose I'll have to put this on my 'to do list' now)

Wikiversity - "a free, open learning environment and community. You can find online courses about many different topics here, and create courses of your own."

The BBC - collective - community , which acts as a space for "exchanging views on new music,film and culture" now has a weblog service for members. It's a basic tool, but it shows just how blogs are becoming more and more part of standard websites.

The ColorMatch Remix is a great tool for trying out variations of colour for any weblog template redesign. Thanks to Cyberdash for this link

Thanks also to anne for the link to this article: The Fourth International Symposium on ELT in China : Theoretical and Practical Applications of Emergent Technology in ELT Classrooms; How the Blog Can Change English Language Teaching There's some good advice here, such as: "The first step for teachers is to try out blogging for themselves. In this scenario, teachers cannot expect their students to do something that they are not willing to do themselves. Each teacher will have his or her own reasons for starting a blog. These reasons must be clear or the blog will not serve the learner’s language development. The blogs can be as general as a journal of daily thoughts, or be more specific in nature. The teacher should prepare beforehand, an activity that will be a catalyst for the language learner’s needs. "

Thnaks to Anne Davis at EduBlog Insights : for this link to an article in The Daily Northwestern and the blog, which student government leaders are using to encourage students to participate more. They have a set of Blog guidelines which state: "Please respect these guidelines. If they are disregarded, we may have to require you to log in to post comments. 1. No personal attacks. Criticise the people's work, attitude, ideas, platforms, the organization, committies etc, but don't use personal insults."

Wikibooks : is a project whose aim is to develop "free, open content textbooks, manuals and other texts." They "currently have over 80 textbooks in various stages of development, of which every page is open to your revision and addition."

Thanks to Stephen Downes for the information about this summer conference that aims to engage as many edu bloggers as possible to remotely participate in a presentation at the June 2004 New Media Consortium Summer Conference in Vancouver . The idea is to try to get away from a "stale conference presentation" by involving as many edubloggers as possible in a presentation "to show the power of using a discrete series of "small" often free/open source technologies" in an educational context. They have started a list of participants already confirmed for the presentation which will take place on the 17th June.

...iain... - Bravenet Web Journal : "In the EFL classroom in Spain or Italy you can expect the students to jump at discussion based exercises and start arguing with each other. Here one has to spoon feed students the English and some students have complained that my feeding technique is too laid back." Another personal journal from a teacher in Japan...

Lockergnome's RSS & Atom Tips : "Stay up-to-date on the latest RSS & Atom news with Lockergnome"

English Notes, Musings, and Observations : "I am curious (actually I wanted to say I wonder...) if a sentence that starts with 'I wonder...', 'We are wondering...', 'They were wondering...', and so on should end in a period or a question mark?" The eprofe blog answers this and others, and makes very interesting reading.

Cyberdash: Weblogs in the writing classroom : "While weblogs are normally public, free tools such as Blogger can be used for private, expressive writing. Students need only choose "no" when Blogger asks if they want a public blogsite, keep their site's location on the web secret, and exchange the URL only with the teacher, resulting in a private electronic writing space where they can be free to express the personal. However, to use blogs merely as a tool for private journaling is to privilege our understanding of journals as private writing spaces without considering the benefits of weblogs as public writing." There's a lot more here of interest to ELT teachers.

Found at the alt.usage.english group "I can accept "blog" as a noun. It's a nifty word that serves a legitimate purpose. I can even accept "blog" as an intransitive verb ("Golly, I just spent my whole afternoon blogging"). But as a transitive verb with a direct object? There's something about "blogging the nanotechnology conference" that just doesn't ring right. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's there. Maybe it's the misuse of the transitive sense, which entails a subject doing something TO a direct object. And because "blogging the conference" doesn't actually do anything TO the conference, it seems an improper usage." What do you think?

Bear with me while I play around with the new templates / features that Blogger has on offer - the links section, etc will be back soon...

The Washington Monthly : "So what are blogs good at?" All this and more explained in this article...

The new Blogger relaunch is more than a facelift. There are new templates to choose from, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, and there are other features that have previously been provided by other weblog providers, or as add-ons to Blogger by third parties (such as the comments feature). I will be playing around with blog-efl to take advantage of this at the weekend.

elearnspace. everything elearning. : "The Art of Blogging Summary Notes" from a presentation by George Siemens of http://www.elearnspace.org

Turning the Tide : "The official weblog of Noam Chomsky, including exclusive, original observations drawn from personal correspondence, ZNet Sustainer Forums posts, and direct blog entries"

EdTechPost has been involved in a discussion about blogging in education The conclusions: That..."maybe blogs were a new form of 'narrative' that promoted more personal, self-reflective style of writing and less of a 'debate' and more 'active listening' than you sometimes get in threaded discussions. A few others seemed to see potential as a journal tool, and as an eportfolio tool. But there were some really valid observations about difficulties that blogs present: as they stand now they can be labour intensive for the instructor or administrator to set up for each student to have an 'individual' site; there are some really valid concerns about student privacy and exposing the students to online 'predators' or the potential for students to stir up public controversy online."

Materials Education 12 Guides for Lecturers is not weblog-related, or even EFL/ESL related, but it does have relevance for those involved in higher education materials writing.

This article in Techlearning explains how an American soap opera is being used to teach Spanish. There is also an example lesson plan , which could be adapted for an english classroom and soap opera. Thanks to Educational Technology for the link

James Trotta's Blogs for learning English + teaching English "provides links to blogs that can be used for learning English + teaching English because ESL + EFL students are welcome and encouraged to post comments on each blog. Please remember that the bloggers themselves welcome comments from people learning English, but that the owner of each blog listed takes no responsibility for other people leaving comments" This is a great introductory site for students. My experience has shown me that lots of students just don't get the idea of blogging at first. It takes a while for them to understand just what they're supposed to do. This could be a solution to that, if, before asking students to get their own blog, they visit this site. All we need now is a worksheet/online activity to take advantage of the information on the site. What do you think, James?

Teresa Almeida d’Eça has made her APPI 2004 presentation slides available. They were used for a presentation on using blogs in EFL and are well worth a look.

R-efl-ECTIONS seems to be a new blog by an EFL teacher. This seems to be a growing trend.

The E-Learning Guide to Blogging and RSS is another 'start here site' that provides a well-organised and easy-to-follow introduction to blogging as an e-learning tool.

Jill's Blog review grade descriptions could easily be adapted for use with ESL/EFL classes if you set a blog review as an assignment. Thanks to Anne Davis at Edublog insights for the lead. In an earlier post, Anne states: "We are using weblogs but in most cases our students are not blogging, per se. Our current educational system is not ready for that big of a leap, and we have much to teach our students before they can learn how to speak responsibly, yet forcefully. That's a whole other discussion so back to the writing focus. Weblogs are unique spaces for us to use in education. We can use weblogs with students to make writing THE focus. We can publish quickly. We can set up an audience for them. We can give them ownership and best of all we can give our students a rich and diverse array of writing experiences. It's a way we can make writing a joy and let our students know that their writing matters." There has been much discussion lately about

Moodle is an open source CMS (Course Management System), often called VLE (Virtual Learning Environment), that has a journal module incorporated. There has been discussion about converting this into a weblog. It seems that the module would give the appearance of a weblog and would work in the same way, but only be available for use by those enrolled on the course. There is also the option of keeping the journal private, so it can be used only as a means of correspondence between teacher and student. I am exploring this for the next academic year, when I will be running an online version of one of my courses, and I'd like to use a VLE with weblog funcionality. Moodle looks like an interesting place to start. Does anyone out there have any experience of this / tips / alternative suggestions? I'd love to hear your comments.

Linguistic Life is an ESL blog from a Michigan-based teacher. There's an insightful reflection on using blogs with classes here Here's an extract: "My own class seems to be keeping up their blogs well. No doubt a large part of this is due to the fact that updating their blogs at least 3 times a week is 15% of their grade. However, I do not think that they would be so inclined to keep it up if I had simply told them it was a requirement and they had to do it. I spent a lot of time explaining why I thought this was an important thing for them to do, and how it could help their learning. I told them that writing on their blog forces them to think in English outside of class, but it lets them think, and write, about subjects that interest them. Constantly practicing their English writing will help their reading, speaking, listening, and grammar as well, because putting their English to use helps them remember vocabulary, and notice grammatical structures they have

LDMA's Life in the WOR Zone is an interesting blog written by a teacher based in Thailand. Here's a smaple from one of his entries: "I get to my class, to find that half of the other trainees have deserted their regular class to join mine...result...not enough handouts...doh! I've got to say that the 3 hours went REALLY well from my perspective, though I'm sure any negative feedback will arrive tomorrow. The really scarey bit for me was the realisation 2 hours later that I had been unwittingly inspected by the Ministry of Education, but I think it should be ok, even though this woman had a face like a bag full of spanners." He also writes a vivid account of the recent troubles in the south of Thailand.

Knowledge Tree - Blogging to Learn : " Have you considered using blogs within your pedagogical practice? Do you know what a blog is? This excellent article makes a significant contribution to the flexible learning debate. Anne Bartlett-Bragg describes the phenomena of blogging, the process of blogging and how it can be used to enhance learning." An interesting article with a 5-stage blogging process

LearnScope An introductory article about blogs in education that srts out to answer the following questions: "How to start your own blog What 's a blog? Why would I want one? How do I get one?"

What's the blogging point? : "Almost every examples I have seen of serious student blogging, took place because running the weblog was more or less a requirement in the course. Students that start (and keep) a weblog without 'formal requirement' are quite rare and only a fraction really blog in relation to their learning goals at all...And even if students are blogging: few of them really will use a self-reflective style that actually displays learning progress and potential stepping stones." An interesting discussion that concludes: "before "personal publishing" can be a valuable tool and students really get more process oriented, we need to introduce a learning environment where teachers change their evaluation method departs from a result orientation as well"

At last year's IATEFL conference, the Britiah Council sponsored 2 webloggers to write reports, which are published here: BBC | British Council teaching English - IATEFL . I've just heard that they are going to do the same at the British Council's Glasgow conference in June. Another example of weblogging at work...

http://blogontheweb.com/eprofe/ : "English Notes, Musings, and Observations"

Melanie Segal has recently started an ESL/EFL related blog called Where is the love? which takes peace as its theme. This, and other blogs can be found on the EFL/ESL blog ring , which Blinger has just started up. Nice idea, Blinger!

Although the workindex article Learning Goes Mobile is aimed at a professional context, there's nothing to say that in the future, students can't use mobile technology to receive learning support. The way mobile technology is going, soon all mobile telephones will have facilities (document readers, audio players) that could be exploited by educators. Perhaps it is too far fetched now, but I'm sure it won't be in a couple of years. Obviously, the problem is the same as always - that not all students will have access to these devices. But, it could be interesting in the future to try out a blog aimed at students who have access to these devices.

Weblogg-ed - Using Weblogs and RSS in Education : - Will Richardson has posted a useful document : RSS: A quick start guide for educators - RSS is something I've avoided so far, despite the comments / suggestions of many on blog-efl that I should provide a feed. This I promise to remedy after the Easter holidays.

ESL EFL friendly blogs for learning English/teaching English : "Blogs for learning English teaching English or ESL EFL friendly blogs provides links to economics blogs, travel blogs, and many other types of blogs. These blogs can be used for learning English teaching English because ESL EFL students are welcome and encouraged to post comments on each blog. " Thanks to James Trotta for this site...

I have changed the design of the site again - It's been long overdue, especially as the tag box code, etc meant that the blog took a long time to load. Now the main blog should load first and the other facilities some time after...

An English as a second language blog - ESL blog "the first time you teach something, you learn something. The second time you teach something, the students learn something. The third time you teach something, no one learns anything." Reflective blog from a Korea-based EFL teacher

Here's another tool that might be useful for educators preparing papers for publication, etc. : QuickTopic Document Review - QuickTopic bulletin board : "You've authored a document and you'd like your peers to review it. Quick Doc ReviewSM gives you an instant private space for gathering comments on any HTML document (Microsoft Word documents too). Your group can comment on each paragraph, directly within the document, and you can also display, sort, and print the comments separately. Comments are all in one central place. This is true collaboration, much better than mailing documents around and having people make comments in isolation. And it's private, but still easy to access."

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The revolution should not be eulogised : "Weblogs are just too varied, too idiosyncratic, to fit into an existing box. Industry analysts might call this disruptive technology because weblogs have changed personal publishing so profoundly that the old rules no longer apply. We are at the beginning of a new age of online publishing "

Weblogg-ed - Using Weblogs and RSS in Education : : "In discussions with students about why so many (at least on our campus) are so uncomfortable with blogging and resistant, we had some provocative conversations about accountability - not everyone wants their words published online where anyone can see and you are held accountable for what you say" ...from a summary of a much longer article entitled I'm Blogging This: A Closer Look at Why People Blog . Thanks to Stephen's Web for the link

ERADC - ePortfolio research and development community : "Many view the ePortfolio as the future of learning, a powerful aid for personal development. The ePortfolio can serve as a tool for learning, assessment, career management and knowledge supervision." Speculative paper discussing how the use of webogs and e-portfolios could be combined

cadence90 :What Bloggers want... "The one greatest differentiator of a weblog from a paper journal is this: it can connect to ideas, documents and material created by people all over the world. Tough to do that with a spiral-bound notebook. The literature of humanity is filled with references to 'magical books' which can effortlessly transport the reader to a multitide of new worlds simply by touching a page or looking at a picture. Each weblog is just such a book -- by simply touching a link, we are whisked off to yet another new sphere of knowledge that is one of an apparently limitless number of unique linked worlds."

wwwtools for teachers : "Edublogs and their associated literature now constitute some of the richest lodes of online learning resources available. This edition of WWWTools for Education can do no more than sketch a mud-map of the current territory, scratch the surface a little, and point to some tools for delving deeper. "

Furl - Your web page filing cabinet : "Furl is a new web browsing tool that lets you save and organize thousands of useful web pages (you know, the ones you want to save for future reference but then can never find again) in a personal 'web page filing cabinet'. Once saved, you can effortlessly find any page again later using a powerful full text search tool. With Furl you can forget trying to save and organize dozens of bookmarks, forget saving web pages to your desktop, in fact forget everything except how to find a useful web page again next time you need it. "

Web Journals in Language Education : "General aims To investigate the use of peer-to-peer collaborative online writing environments within the context of language education. To create a collaborative web platform which allows language students to keep an online journal. To investigate cross-cultural virtual communities of language learners"

Teresa Almeiada d'Eca will also be presenting her experience of using a class blog for 7th grade students at TESOL 2004. Teresa was instrumental in encouraging me to start blogging, and it should be a great presentation. Look here for more details: Internet Fair 2004 - Let's Blog!

Teresa Almeida dEca has a new class blog for her 5th graders (beginner EFLers) called Fun with English . It's an interesting project, not only because she's using the blog with beginners, but also because, as she herself said: "We've been having an exchange with three Polish kids for several weeks now and have been using voice messaging from HandyBits. It's a great user-friendly tool!" I'd never heard of Handybits before, but it seems to add an extra dimension to Teresa's class blog, and it's freeware too. Check out Teresa's blog to find out more.

Translating Dictionary, Thesaurus, and More : "LookWAYup combines a multilingual dictionary, thesaurus, translation, and other handy tools. With a double-click you can look-up the meaning of a word, search it on the same site or the whole Web using your favorite search engine, and more! All that without leaving the Web page." Thanks to Colin at http://blogalization.nu/ for this - a fabulous tool that's perfect for EFL / ESL student blogs * Try it out : click on any word in this page for an instant definition...

Following on from James's idea, I've decided to look for Travel-related sites first, and have started looking at Blogorama , a Blog directory that's worth bookmarking. Means of transport: The first one isn't a weblog and doesn't allow comments to be posted on actual entries, but it does have a guestboook, and is a fabulous travel site: The Man in Seat 61 is a site all about travelling by train. Traveller's Blogs Anne and Stephen's Big Adventure has now finished, but the blog of what happened to these two world travellers is still online and has a comments feature. North America by bike is also over, but still online. No comments feature, however. By Country: One way of approaching travel blogs could be by country. If the students choose a country and try to discover something about it's culture, geography, etc, as part of a wider project, it might be a good idea for them to check out some blogs about that country to get a mor

James Trotta at the Weblog in ELT group British Council Search English site is doing some research on using blogs with students for reading. He is compiling a list of blogs by category, that allow for comments to be posted by students. This not only gives students extra reading practice, but enables them to get involved in a L1 community that appeals to their own interests. Great idea James! Hopefully we can publish the list shortly on the Search English site if anyone's interested in this. Just register for a password and go to the forum / file section. Meanwhile, I'll start posting here sites that meet the criteria. Please let us know if you know of any sites too.

Blogalization | Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it. : "Double-click any word on this site to view its definition, or enter it above" I'm not sure how this works, but it does work, and is a wonderful tool to have on a blog / web-page aimed at students of English...