Blogging with language students

Believe it or not, the most important word in this post title is the preposition. I say that because it is very common to see educators blogging at students, at other educators or about students. But the beauty of such a tool is actually to be able to blog with your students.

The first choice you have to make when blogging with students is what kind of blogging you will have:

- A teacher's blog in which students participate in the comment area

- A class blog in which all students are added as authors

- A class portal (using tools like 21classes, pageflakes or netvibes) with students' individual blogs

There aren't better or worse options, all of them work and the examples used to illustrate my suggestions come from the three kinds of blogging:

1. Working with students' writing

The characteristic of being able to receive comments and to edit posts makes a blog the perfect environment for process writing.

1.1 Peer Feedback

You could have class blog and have students post their initial drafts there. You and other students could give feedback and students can then edit their writing in the blog. check these examples of a students giving (previously instructed) peer feedback on content and organization:
- South Africa (esp. Tahís' comment)
- Australia (esp. Luciana's comment)

1.2 World Feedback

The usual route of a student's writing is this: Student gives it to teacher, teacher corrects it and gives it back to student, student sees the grade and rarely cares about mistakes, student puts writing in a drawer (hopefully) or throws it away (most probably).

However, by allowing learners' to realize that in a blog they are writing to a global audience and that anybody can find, read and react to their writings, they can develop a better sense of authorship and readership. Writing to one person only (the teacher) is a very artificial task, whereas writing to a real audience, who is more interested in the content rather than the form (the world), is more authentic.

By networking with other language educators, you could have language students and teachers from different countries read your students' writings and give them meaningful feedback.

Check out the following examples. Students get really excited when they see real people from different countries are reading their writings:
- Chocolate com Pimenta
- Malhação
- The Simpsons
- Kennan and Kell - notice how, in this last example, students from different classes (one from Casa Thomas Jefferson south branch and the other from CTJ north branch) get into real information exchange to whether the actor from the show has really died or not.

1.3 Teasers

You could brainstorm for ideas or simply generate expectations in students about he writing they will have to do. I have used this to introduce a writing about their favorite TV show and about their dream vacation destination.

2. Intercultural Projects

Again by networking with (language) educators from different countries, you could have joint projects with a class of English students in a different country. Here are two ideas:

2.1 What makes your country unique

You could ask your students to answer the question "What makes Brazil (or their country) a unique country" using a word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, picture(s), video(s), etc. and then have them post their finding in the class blog or their own blogs.

Last semester I did this with my students and I had Sophie, a teacher in Australia, do the same with her ESL students. We compiled students answers in an animoto video and here are the results:

- What makes Brazil a unique coutry

- What makes Australia a unique coutry video and word map using wordle

2.2 Questions about your country

You could also have students come up with questions about the other students' coutry(ies). Send them the questions and they can publish their answers, which could also generate more discussions. Here are some of the posts with what my students answered about Brazil and here the one in which EFL students in Australia answered to my students' questions.

You can also vary the way the questinos are answered. For example, in this blog post you can see in a video the answers my students in Brazil gave questions asked by Russian college students.

3. Grammar

3.1 Modal Vebs of Speculation in the past

I searched for images on the web, put them together in a slide.com slide and asked students to write sentences in this blog post about what might/could/may/must/can't have happened to the people in the pictures.

3.2 Second Conditional

I embedded this "If I had a million dollars" video in the blog post and students had to write in the comments what they would do if they had a million dollars.

To get away from the cliche, next time I work with second conditionals, I'll definitely use this other video - if my nose was running money (check it out - it's really funny).

Final Considerations

Only two of them:

- two groups that I recommend if you want to to start networking with other language educators are Learning With Computers and Webheads In Action. Join them!

- All digital activites I propose to students are optional. However, as an incentive, I have been doing something Carla Arena suggested: the HALL OF DIGITAL EXCELLENCE. It's a grid with students' names and the online tasks on the wall and, for each task accomplished, they get a tick in the chart. At the end of the semester the most digitally excellent student gets a prize. It's interesting to see how this HALL works on their egos...

I hope you find some of these suggestions useful!

Ronaldo Lima Jr

more EdTech tips on my blog ihopeitworks