Week 1 feedback.

Hi all,

This is a short feedback about what our colleague , Khadija, wrote in her report concerning blogs:In her report , Khadija highlighted the important role of blogs in facilitating students learning , and giving a new breathe to teaching English. From her point of view we can deduce:

* Blogs are a call for change and novelty in learning and motivation.
* Thanks to blogs students become responsible for their learning because they are involved in it by reading and writing..
* The blogs as important tools of teaching symbolize a new method to approach modern teaching technology.

Thank you Miss Khadija.
All the best,Houssnia.

Hi dear colleagues,

While week one assignment dealt with definitions, theories and views about blogs and bloggers, week two , however, shed more light on how to put these into practice.Hence , there are three main powerful softwares to create blogs for EFL education .

1-BLOGGER.
2-WORDPRESS.
3-BLOGGERLINES.

There several common features between the three softawares which are as follows:

* Teachers may opt to create blogs in all the softwares because they sherish a rapid access to the web. Bloggers manage to create blogs , update them and post whatever they want through them in a twinkling of an eye.

* All of them encompass the "RSS"(Real Simple Syndication)(Real Site Summary) feature, which means that all the bloggers get notified whenever a text is posted on the web so that they can share it with others and comment on it as well.

*The three softwares are meant to bridge the gap between users and create a community of bloggers through reading and writing.Coming to which software to use with students I would say that:*WORDPRESS is an easy one in use since it stands as simple plat form for chatting with aesthetic aspect.

*BLOGERLINES: enhances building a community of users but without a possiblity to add links or photos on it.*BLOGGER is the most wide and powerfull for its huge capicity to hold files , add links , photos, and post messages,I think it can be the most suitable one for students.As for the difference between the three kinds od blogs:

1-TUTOR BLOG is a blog created by the teacher while the students are not necessarily members of it , they just get the instruction from the blog and do the assignment on their own pace , then send the feedback to the tutor's email box.

2-CLASSROOM BLOG is a blog for the whole class'students , both the teacher and the students are members , it completes class work outside it. The students are meant to work in groups or individually on the same issue mentioned on the blog and post their findings to it...

3- LEARNER BLOG is when every student create their own blog. And having the others commenting on it , sharing the links, providing advice , views and constructive criticism. I think it's the best one since it gives room to self development , info sharing and progress.

Should I create a blog for my students I would opt for Classroom blog because it gives more weigh to collaboration and cooperative learning , I would add some links on my blog and post some instruction / questions about reading short stories and grammar quizzes online ,so that they can do them and post the answer on the blog.And latter I would encourage them to create their own blog.

Why not I may cherish a dream coming true : INTERGRATING ICT IN THE CLASSROOM.
All the best ,Houssnia.