An article from Terry…

That reminds me, Terry sent an email last week:

Wikis and Podcasts and Blogs! Oh, My! What Is a Faculty Member Supposed to Do?

a great article about blogging/teaching

I found a great article about blogging and teaching.  I think it is very important for our work.  Give it a read and tell me what you think:

Linkin´ (B)Logs: A New Literacy of Hyperlinks

Adding Pictures to the Blogs

Hi guys (again),

 I was browsing through some of your blogs and I have noticed that you have been attaching pictures to some of your entries. How do you do that? (I am sure I can ask Grazi to show me at Itaim, but having a brief on-line explanation might also help other teachers who do not know how to do it I have been able to add a YouTube video to my latest entry, but no pictures so far.

Thanks for the help.

Rick

Song Project — Inter Teen 2

Hi guys,

Unlike I had mentioned before, I did not use the Little Mermaid activity in our blog. It made more sense to deal with it in class since it closely related to Unit 7 in Northstar. Also, I felt like my group was a bit tired of discussing surveillance, parents keeping an eye on their children, etc because of the many readings and extra activities related to this topic. I did not want our blog to be an extension of our class discussion, but something a bit more enjoyable, less academic related. So, I have decided to borrow the idea of the Song Project from the course itself, and adapt it to a blog acitivity. I have written one as guidance to my students, which you guys are obviously more than welcome to take a look at.

As I progress in this blog project, the more I feel that the focus our blogs should not be the teaching of English itself, but an opportunity for our students to USE English as a way to communicate their ideas to the world. English should be the means through which our students get their ideas across, and not the final goal itself. What do you guys think?

 Rick

Cincinnati Shot

I-471

Originally uploaded by Picture_taking_fool

This one is for Grazi. This is a night shot of Cincinnati, a place where I spent a lot of time when I was younger. Here you can see the Ohio River.

This picture reminds me of the time I went to a Jimmy Buffett concert with some friends. Great nice, great times, great memories.

Hope you like it!

Big Cities

Unit 3 in Teen 9 deals with big cities.  I will propose two different activities for my students:

In the first one, they will find a striking / unusual / pleasant picture of a big city on the internet (I’ll get them to explore flickr) and post something about it.

In the second one, they will go to 43 places and choose a big city to write about.

My Teen 7 Blog Clusters

Here is a link to my Teen 7 Brainstorm Clusters that we did last on Thursday, September 6th, 2007. In the 2 classes I decided to work in groups of 3. You can see the results for yourselves. I was impressed by some of the groups´ imaginations. This will give us a place to start.

See the group here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10124756@N08/sets/72157601948743189/

Our new poster…

My creation

Originally uploaded by willisca

I just created a magazine cover to post in the teachers´ rooms at the branches. What do you guys think??

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

What to do next?

I am going to throw Rick´s doubt back to the group.  What do you think you should be doing with your students?  What will get them to have fun, react and produce? 

Remember, we are testing this idea; nobody knows what should be done next.  I know Renato is trying something more open, not necessarily related to the topics we are discussing in class.  This approach will probably work best for him.  For me, I am going to work on free, but guided activities, also not directly related to the class material.  But not everybody has the same perspective. 

I would say that Rick should work on writing prompts with his students.  This is something he is very good at, but will it work here in the blog project.  I don´t know and we will only know if we try.

Don´t forget that we have to ask our students what they would like to do.  Last Friday we had a discussion at the meeting about this.  We decided that a brainstorming session in class would be a great idea.  Try this on the whiteboard and have someone take a picture with their cell phone and post it to the blog.  Then post it here to our blog for everyone to see!!! 

I think we are going in the right direction and just to have students writing is something very positive. 

More to come later….