Vance's CALL resources main
page | View Site
Index | Vance's
papers and presentations
Tiny URL for this web page: http://tinyurl.com/3jc5o
Navigate this
document: The presenters | What happened during the presentation |
What is blogging? | Why
blother? | How to start your own blog |
What do people do with blogs? | Downsides | References
|
2005
TESOL Arabia Tactile Tasks and Technical Tips Learner Independence and
IT SIGs of TESOL Arabia http://ilearn.20m.com/pasteventsb.html#tttt
Thursday, April
14, 2005 - 9:45 - 12:45 (05:45 -08:45 GMT) at the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi
Live
and online webcast: Let's go blogging now, everyone is learning how, come on
and go blogging with me |
|
Vance
Stevens presenting with online moderator Buthaina Al-Othman
This
presentation was Webcast thanks to the Elluminate software provided by Learning
Times http://www.learningtimes.org: We
used the Elluminate voice/webcam presentation room at
http://www.tinyurl.com/y3eh
05:45 GMT - The first hour will be dedicated to
those who don't already have blogs but have heard so much about them that
they're ready to start their own. The objective is to teach people how to blog
and expected outcome is for some blogs to be started online during the hour.
Choices include Blogger (most popular) and
Buzznet (easy to use), and for the more
ambitious, why not start one of each? (and if you're really ambitious, you can
start audio blogs and even video blogs). |
|
- For online interaction one on one between online tutor and
online or on-site tutee, participants will use Tapped In
http://www.tappedin.org from their lab
computers.
- I will conduct the session from a centrally positioned computer
running Elluminate, which online participants can monitor, in addition to
Tapped In, at http://www.tinyurl.com/y3eh. To
establish presence, I'll webcast via voice and web cam through Elluminate, and
it would be good (but optional) for online participants to have web cams
running in Yahoo Messenger. I can display a number of those on the central
whiteboard so the on-site audience knows who's with them from a distance and
get feedback on their blogs as they put them online.
06:45 GMT - The second 1-hour session is for those
who already blog and those from the first hour who are still interested but
wondering what to do with their new blogs. We can discuss with the online
tutors how they use blogs using the Elluminate voice tool. If the web cams
degrade voice we might have to switch them off, but we can at least get screen
images of you on web cam and paste them to the Elluminate white board. |
|
- In this section we regard blogs from the perspective of
student and all other writers in search of platform, audience, and feedback,
and from that of teachers seeking to establish portals for their student and
professional learning communities, such as that at
http://webpres2005.buzznet.com.
07:45 GMT - the lab at the PI will be available for
self-access study for those who wish to continue on-site and online.
(More info about the past TTTT events can be found at
http://ilearn.20m.com/pasteventsb.html#tttt).
Members of the Webheads community of practice are invited and encouraged to
attend from their respective locations and interact with the on-site
audience. |
Navigate this document: Top of document |
The presenters | What happened during the
presentation | What is blogging? | Why blother? | How to start your
own blog | What do people do with blogs? |
Downsides | References
About the presenters
- Vance: http://www.vancestevens.com/vance.htm
- Buthaina Al-Othman will act as 'producer' managing the chat areas
from her base in Kuwait. Buth followed up in her producer role with a set of
web pages:
- James Benenson, author of chapter about blogs in a book he
co-authored in France: "Guide bilingue de la communication electronique"--
"Bilingual Guide to Electronic Communication" Langues pour tous, Presse Pocket,
Paris, 2003, 320pgs
- Chris Jones has offered to be online the first hour
Navigate this document: Top of document |
The presenters | What happened during the
presentation | What is blogging? | Why blother? | How to start your
own blog | What do people do with blogs? |
Downsides | References
That was the plan ...
What actually happened was that the LT Elluminate portal
failed to work properly. I believe it was a bandwidth issue in the lab I was
working from. There were 20 people online from there the first hour and
Elluminate worked for me only as long as I did NOT broadcast voice, show a
video, or attempt screenshare. As soon as I did one of those I would lose the
connection and the program would then attempt to reconnect. It succeeded and
held the connection until I tried to speak, then I would lose it again. The
second hour with only 6 people present, it was better. I was able to talk and
conduct web tours, but lost the connection when I started my web cam. I did not
attempt screen sharing. At least for that hour I was able to give a voice and
web-tour presentation online (while showing web cam in Yahoo Messenger). For
the first hour, the 15 min of glitches cost me some focus in my on-site
audience. However, one innovation we had made at Buth's suggestion saved the
day for the online audience. Buth had volunteered to act as 'producer' and was
therefore able to moderate and hold the session together for those online. The
result the first hour was that they had their session while I worked with the
on-site folks to get them to start blogs. Four were produced at that session on
April 14
Navigate this document: Top of document |
The presenters | What
happened during the presentation | What is blogging? | Why blother? | How to start your
own blog | What do people do with blogs? |
Downsides | References
What is blogging?
Navigate this document: Top of document |
The presenters | What
happened during the presentation | What is
blogging? | Why blother? | How to start your own
blog | What do people do with blogs? |
Downsides | References
Why blother?
- Elizabeth Hanson-Smith says "the materials Bee, Graham, and Aaron
developed for Weblogging are far superior to anything else I've seen, including
a nice recorded chat about how to create the feeds for your aggregator. Join
the YG at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/weblogging
and check out their syllabus and links." Apropos to that, Bee points out: "More
resources and readings on blogging can be found in the wiki opened for the Evo
05 weblogging workshop, which all webheads and teachers are invited to
consult.(and why not collaborate by adding your own to this common open area).
http://www.opensource.idv.tw/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
"
- Campbell, Aaron Patric. (2003). Weblogs for Use with ESL
Classes. Internet TESL Journal Vol. IX, No. 2, February 2003,
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Campbell-Weblogs.html.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to introduce three ways that weblogs can
be used to support ESL classroom learning. After defining what a weblog is, I
will proceed to show how weblogs can be put into immediate use in the ESL
classroom by means of three distinct types: the tutor weblog, learner weblog,
and class weblog. I will also mention the software available for creating and
maintaining weblogs.
- Renata Suzuki. (2004). Diaries as introspective research
tools: From Ashton-Warner to Blogs. TESL-EJ Vol 8 #1, June: On the Internet
column. Retrieved April 14, 2004 from
http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej29/int.html.
- There is a resource page on blogs at:
http://anvil.gsu.edu/NECC2004/.
One of the postings there at
http://anvil.gsu.edu/NECC2004/stories/storyReader$13
entitled 'What are the possibilities for weblogs in education?' gives a few
dozen ways that teachers and students can use blogs effectively.
Navigate this document: Top of document |
The presenters | What
happened during the presentation | What is
blogging? | Why blother? | How to start your own
blog | What do people do with blogs? |
Downsides | References
How to start your own blog
Navigate this document: Top of document |
The presenters | What
happened during the presentation | What is
blogging? | Why blother? | How to start your own blog | What do people do with blogs?
| Downsides | References
What do people do with blogs?
- Vance's interlinked community portal at:
http://webpres2005.buzznet.com.
Sample
student blogs: http://mohammed.buzznet.com/
Previous
work (big picture):
http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/pi/projects2003.htm
- This just in from Teresa Almeida d'Eca: "Vance, If you still
have the chance, you can link to my Have Fun with English
http://wwwin.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/school/fun-with-english5.htm
to show what can be done with absolute beginners (youngsters, of course). Some
of the ideas can be used with other level students. If you do have the chance,
also take a look at Feb05 (sic - Feb 04?? ... with several voice emails
and a tutorial on HandyBits) and Mar05 (with an Easter recorded poem by Agata
and her son Tommy - so cute! - and the low-tech solution for sending messages
at the bottom of the page)."
- Susanne Nyrop's Mystery Guest at
http://www.xanga.com/susnyrop in
collaboration with Sergei Gridyushko in Minsk. Sus writes (just now) "Sergei
and I are preparing a Virtual Putlick session with his students - I've been
their mystery guest using a shared blog where they have asked very interesting
and thought provoking questions - and now we're meeting online on Tuesday so
they can continue our conversation. We are going to use this experiment for
Vance's session on April 30; we'll share with you when possible. Our blog is at
http://www.goinupstream.blogspot.com
'
- James Benenson spoke to us from France: "After using blogs
with my English classes here in France for over two years, here are a few
suggestions for other teachers who would like to start using blogs... I use
Blogger with all my classes and, of course, invite the students to be
members... we use the blog mostly to collect interesting websites related to
what we're working on in class, but also to link to webpages that some of the
students make. http://supelec.blogspot.com is an
example... 1) My students are quite tech-savy (I teach in an engineering
school) so I usually make my students "administrators" so they have access to
the template and encourage them to change it when they want and to add links to
the permanent set of links in the side frame of the blog. (I'd like it to be
their blog and not mine.) 2) If you can, use your account on your school
server, rather than blog.spot, to host your blogs... you have to set the ftp
settings in blogger properly but this lets you upload images and other files
directly to your server without having to use the photo services (like Picasa
for PCs or flickr or BuzzNet for Macs) and gives you much more freedom. 3) Be
sure that all your students know how to install and use BlogThis! in their
toolbar... (If they're on PC's they might already have the Google toolbar, then
they just have to activate the BlogThis! option.) 4) Sometimes students
"forget" to look at the blog, but all of them read their email regularly. Make
a mailing list for your class and put this address in the blog settings so that
each time someone posts something on the class blog everyone gets the posting
in their email. They'll have the link back to the blog so they can go and
contribute a comment. 5) In order to encourage the students to contribute to
the blog, I let them take it in turns to be the blog animators of the week
(usually in pairs); then they're responsible for adding interesting links to
the class blog that week. It's a good way to help them to appropriate the blog
as their own and to avoid having all the postings signed by the teacher!"
- Ahmed Moustafa, in the audience in Abu Dhabi, spoke to the
online audience about his work with MLI students, where newcomers to the MLI
were introduced to life there through a blog record left by previous ones:
http://mlistudent.blogspot.com. As
Ahmed described it: "For the past two years, MLI students have created
Student-Learning Portfolios in which they have reflected on their learning at
the MLI. Most of the students' authentic comments have been harvested right
before they graduate and published as one Blog entitled Why I Came to MLI.The
blog speaks of MLI students primary motivation to come to the MLI, their
expectations at the beginning, how far they have improved, how they could
overcome the learning difficulties in learning English, what skills they still
need to work on, and their future plans of study after leaving the MLI. This
tool has been effectively used with a number of MLI classes when they first
arrived. The aim is to provide motivating examples of how well former MLI
students have done. The modeling here can be very effective. If my colleague,
friend, brother who shares the same educational and cultural background has
successfully improved his English at the MLI, I definitely can do it too.MLI
Student Blog is also used to help MLI students set future goals to study
English at a very early stage. The communication, through writing comments to
this blog, between MLI students alumni and the current students at the MLI
could help in motivating underachieving at-risk students. This blog can also be
used to provide an example of student learning at the MLI for use in future
recruiting projects or any project where MLI will present itself to the
Public." Also mentioned as an example of student work with blogs at the MLI:
http://bdauphin-02.blogspot.com
Navigate this document: Top of document |
The presenters | What
happened during the presentation | What is
blogging? | Why blother? | How to start your own blog | What do
people do with blogs? | Downsides | References
Downsides??
Navigate this document: Top of document |
The presenters | What
happened during the presentation | What is
blogging? | Why blother? | How to start your own blog | What do
people do with blogs? | Downsides |
References
More
References
- Teresa Almeida d'Eça has created a separate "Blogs"
section in her WiA Index pages:
http://www.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/webheads/wia-index2.htm#blogs
There is also a list here of blogs by Webheads, examples of a great variety of
ways that this set of language learning practioners uses blogs. See also
Teresa's OLE page.
http://www.malhatlantica.pt/teresadeca/webheads/online-learning-environments.htm
(click Blogs)
- Curt Bonk has a list of blogging resources on this page:
http://www.trainingshare.com/resources/links.htm
- James Simpson suggests "Into the blogosphere"
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/
; John Hibbs responded
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/the_spirit_of_paulo_freire.html
- 'incorporated subversion' is the title of James Farmer's
Online Education Weblog, great set of bibliographic references on blogs from
mid-July 2004: http://radio.weblogs.com/0120501/2004/07/15.html#a756
- Ferdig, Richard E., and Kaye D. Trammell. (2004).
Content Delivery in the 'Blogosphere'. T.H.E. Journal (February or March
issue); retrieved March 18, 2004 from:
http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A4677.cfm?kw=&gw=
- John Hibbs has some pointers to some interesting articles on blogs at the Blogging Page for Global Learn Day, http://bfranklin.edu/blog/
- Martin Röll. Distributed KM - Improving Knowledge
Workers' Productivity and Organisational Knowledge Sharing with Weblog-based
Personal Publishing. Paper presented to BlogTalk 2.0, "The European Conference
on Weblogs", Vienna, July 5th and 6th 2004.
http://www.roell.net/publikationen/distributedkm.shtml
- For advanced users, there is a Blog Software Breakdown: examination
and comparison of software for setting up blogs on your own server, at
http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm
- There is a Yahoo Group for Blogging that you can join at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/esl_efl_blogs/.
You can read the messages at the site without being a member.
- Comparative chart :
http://blinger.org/imagesblog-comparison.htm
- Vance's list of resources on blogs:
http://www.vancestevens.com/papers/evonline2002/week5.htm#blogs
Navigate this document:
Top of document | The presenters |
What happened during the presentation |
What is blogging? | Why
blother? | How to start your own blog |
What do people do with blogs? | Downsides | References
This page updated June 22, 2005
Copyright 2005 by Vance
Stevens