Aaron Campbell, Barbara Dieu and Graham Stanley are putting on a six-week online workshop titled “Using Weblogs in ESL/EFL Classes:
New Developments, Uses, and Challenges”. Anne and I will be leading chats at points, mine on RSS in the classroom. There are over 150 participants from all over the world, and I’m really interested to see how it’s all going to work. The leaders have done an amazing job of organizing it, and I’m happy to have been asked to be a part of it because I’m once again learning about a lot of online collaboration sites like TappedIn, Alado, and Learning Times that I haven’t really used before.
One note about the Yahoo group where the participants are meeting before the class begins. I haven’t used a newsgroup like that in quite a while, and now I remember why. There are over 275 messages coming fast and furious. And even though there is an RSS feed for the group, only the first two lines get aggregated, so it’s pretty much useless. (Is there a way to change Yahoo feeds that maybe I don’t know about?) Actually, now that I think about it, maybe it’s not the group but the feed I’m having trouble dealing with.
At any rate, should be a great experience…
I went to the link for the workshop. . . is this open to anyone? I didn’t see anything about registering or fees. Is this workshop more appropriate for people who are experienced with blogging and such or could a rookie like me understand? I’ve been looking for a workshop to help me learn about blogging in my classroom.
Jane Levy
Hi Jane…The course is designed primarily for ESL/EFL teachers with some experience using internet based tools for teaching and who would like to learn more about how to use blogs in their classes or for reflective practice. Check out the description of the course here:
http://www.geocities.com/ehansonsmi/evo2005/blogs.html
If you think it is for you, follow the link at the bottom to register. The course is free.
If you have no experience whatsoever with using the internet for educational purposes, or are looking for a more well-rounded examination of internet tools for teaching, you might benefit more from the ‘Becoming a Webhead’ session, where the use of blogs will also be touched upon:
http://www.geocities.com/ehansonsmi/evo2005/BaW.html
Hope that helps.
Aaron 🙂