Since the participants in the Big Sig event have created their personal blog, it is time to discover the magical things they can do with it in their classroom, not to merely impress students by allowing them to indulge in new technology, but to encourage them to evolve their critical thinking skills together with the language ones in a way unprecedented for most Greek learners.
Through the use of web-logs, contemplating on serious world issues could be encouraged in the language classroom; hunger, war, intolerance and poverty are some of the topics about which related vocabulary, ideas, handouts and slides can be conveniently embedded in the teacher’s blog and, thus, presented to a wider audience in an easily accessible and, quite significantly, environmentally friendly way. Students can additionally be urged to read literature and other texts, published on the teacher or the class blog.
Not only will creative teacher blogging be analysed in this session, but student blogging will also be thoroughly dealt with: How should a class blog be organized? What kind of activities can be assigned there and how can they be assessed? What are the resulting benefits of this classroom practise and how does it lead to alternative assessment?
Before would-be bloggers are intimidated by the thought of undertaking such a wide variety of online projects, they should bear Zig Ziglar’s words in mind: ‘You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.’
http://tesolgreece.org/34th_Annual_International_Convention.htm |