I started using Wordpress blogs with my high school students last year. You can have a look at a whole year 10th grade EFL blogging here
and this year's blogs in the making .
Michael, you asked me why I am using Wordpress and how I use the static and dynamic pages it offers. Just like Elgg, Wordpress offers different privacy levels for different posts , posts under password, private posts, drafts
and allows multiple users with different functions (administrator, editor,author and contributor)
The static pages are used for the About Me page (which seldom changes much), for the year evaluation and this year students will be also posting links to papers and compositions they choose to constitute their writing porfolio. Another student has asked me whether she can post her poems there, which is also a perfect place to collect them as it also offers the comment function so people will be able to react to them.
The dynamic pages are the blog itself, and here the students post according to their own interests. I introduce them to various social tools, with which they experiment throughout the year. We have used the 43 trio (things, places and people), Flickr, Community Walk, Bloglines, Del.icio.us and Suprglu. It usually takes about 3 to 4 classes to explain the mechanics of the blog and open the different accounts.
You will notice that most personal accounts to these tools are linked from the student blogs under the Category My Portfolio.
As English is a foreign language for them, I also suggest links to dictionnaries online (Wordreference and Thesaurus) and podcasting sites they can listen to at home.
I have tried to assess them formally using rubrics but do not feel this has worked well and I almost went crazy with 80 blogs to correct. I gave up on this and assess them more holistically. After a month, I collect the most salient mistakes, give a class revising the main points and ask them to check their posts and correct them. Only then I give a mark, based mostly on organization of ideas, use of more complex structures and vocabulary and content. Many times I help them in class, looking over their shoulder and asking them to rephrase.
For the year evaluation, I gave them a plan to follow (describe the different tools you have used, their function, your impressions and suggestions for the following year or classes to come)
I have used Flickr mostly in experiential activities, during which the students participated in the choice of headers for the Dekita site and engaged in conversation with the photographer as they were interested in finding more about him. The students were so engaged in this that they took their own photos during the holidays a month later and some joined different groups with whom they communicate. I have shown them how and why to use tags and we discussed copywright and the Creative Commons License.
My 12th grade students participated with me in the Mentor Young Caucasus Women project on the topic “Foreign languages, identity and intercultural competence" by posting on their own blogs their personal narratives.
Although I have not made any research on this, I noticed that those who did a year blogging tend to be less dependent and more self-directed. They know where to search for extra material to link and find people to read and comment on. They also try to polish their writing by looking for better words in the dictionnary and often volunteer to help their peers.
Barbara Dieu
Posts made by Barbara Dieu
Hello Derek,
So good to meet you again. And here! Warm memories of the unconference in Christchurch.
I had a quick look at the icommunities you are involved in and I especially like the outside in and inside out plan you set out in the Strategic Goals pic where you outline the need for "grouping spaces together into collections that reflect potentially related interests" and "community discussion from collection are flows over into individual spaces".
Would you use aggregators and tags to accomplish this, a mashup or is there sthg else in the making that we are not aware of?
So good to meet you again. And here! Warm memories of the unconference in Christchurch.
I had a quick look at the icommunities you are involved in and I especially like the outside in and inside out plan you set out in the Strategic Goals pic where you outline the need for "grouping spaces together into collections that reflect potentially related interests" and "community discussion from collection are flows over into individual spaces".
Would you use aggregators and tags to accomplish this, a mashup or is there sthg else in the making that we are not aware of?
I have tried clicking on it from inside the Moodle and also pasting it on the address bar in another window. I always get the message I posted above. Maybe my school restricts the access to Live Journal, which I doubt .
At home I could not open it either but do not remember whether the message was the same. I will look for an answer from the IT dept here at school and check it again at home tonight.
For some reason, Michael, I cannot open from school the links to Live Journal you have inserted in the Moodle. This is the message that appears:
Error Code: 502 Proxy Error. The ISA Server denied the specified Uniform Resource Locator (URL). (12202) IP Address: 10.1.0.100 Date: 13/02/2007 12:09:25 Server: beta.lyceepasteur.org Source: proxyI also got an error message from home.
I am sorry, Michael for having invaded this thread with my K12 links but I had not even noticed that this was about Higher Education - I got your mail in my inbox this morning and reacted to your invitation to introduce ourselves and say something about our practice.
Even though I know that the links I provided to my students' EFL posts do not match the depth, creativity and reflection of university level students posting in their native language, I think that educators and learners at all levels undergo very much the same learning process you have described (the juggling act), regardless the tools they are using. While some will find their motivation and fullfilment in blogs and writing, others will function better in wikis, making movies or painting, while many would rather not get involved with any of it.
What I love about all this is that the introduction of these new technologies has brought together experts, tutors and learners from all areas and exposed old-established practices which have reduced learning to an inert static fossilized object instead of the organic, flexible, challenging and stimulating ecology it should be.
For me each tool has its nature and its function which in turn determine its use. In the same way you do not eat soup with a knife, a blog should not be used to post homework or directives to students. This is what I meant when I went from more open to more structured and back to more open and experiential again. These social tools, in permanent beta, foster experimentation, discovery and learning from other sources than the teacher.
I started with blogs in the class to encourage conversation and self-expression and somehow slipped some months later into total top-down control mode mindset, barking orders on a tool which is basically designed for free expression and interaction. I should have used a closed environment, an LMS like Blackboard to do this instead :-)
More to follow.
Even though I know that the links I provided to my students' EFL posts do not match the depth, creativity and reflection of university level students posting in their native language, I think that educators and learners at all levels undergo very much the same learning process you have described (the juggling act), regardless the tools they are using. While some will find their motivation and fullfilment in blogs and writing, others will function better in wikis, making movies or painting, while many would rather not get involved with any of it.
What I love about all this is that the introduction of these new technologies has brought together experts, tutors and learners from all areas and exposed old-established practices which have reduced learning to an inert static fossilized object instead of the organic, flexible, challenging and stimulating ecology it should be.
For me each tool has its nature and its function which in turn determine its use. In the same way you do not eat soup with a knife, a blog should not be used to post homework or directives to students. This is what I meant when I went from more open to more structured and back to more open and experiential again. These social tools, in permanent beta, foster experimentation, discovery and learning from other sources than the teacher.
I started with blogs in the class to encourage conversation and self-expression and somehow slipped some months later into total top-down control mode mindset, barking orders on a tool which is basically designed for free expression and interaction. I should have used a closed environment, an LMS like Blackboard to do this instead :-)
More to follow.