ABS Conference for Coordinators

Last Saturday August 18th August, Gladys and I presented at the 6th ABS International Congress for English Coordinators and Directors of Studies in Buenos Aires. Gladys devoted to wikis and their use in an educational context and I did the same about blogs. We were assigned a rather big room this time (much bigger than the one we had in February's Congress for Teachers of English), but people kept coming in even after the beginning of the presentation. We were happy to see that more teachers are becoming aware of the importance of integrating technology in schools.
Due to the profile of our expected audience, I devoted a section of my presentation to dealing with different ways in which school principals can make use of blogs. First, they might assume a leading role in encouraging blogging among the teachers and students in their institution to build a school learning network and second, they might engage in blogging themselves to:

1. Present and share with parents (and receive feedback if they enable the comments feature):

• School behaviour rules
• School goals
• Students’ projects

2. Announce and give the possibility to react to:

• Celebrations
• Shows
• Meetings
• Sport events
• Open classes
• Field trips

3. Introduce staff (and give them the chance to introduce themselves and their projects and methods to the community)

4. Comment on issues related to children and education (sexual education, mobile phones and shools, addictions, cheating, education policy)

5. Link class blogs and give feedback on them

6. Write their memoirs to pass on their experience to the new generations.

School administrators might choose to enable the comments feature in order to interact with students, parents, staff within school community and among other communities (other administrators facing the same challenges), conduct informal polls, etc. to get in touch with the feelings and opinions of the people involved in their school as staff, parents or students, or disable the comments feature if they think this is too risky, and use their blogs as newsletters.

I don't know if there are any school principals blogging in Argentina. My opinion is that people here are not ready yet to discuss things openly and may be afraid of others' reactions. It will take time and lots of schoolteachers blogging to bring this healthy activity to the top of the pyramid.

Gladys has uploaded the slides for our presentation to her wbsite. They are also available from her Slideshare space.

On a more personal note, we had the opportunity to meet a LwCer from La Plata, Nelba Quintana, at the conference. She's a very enthusiastic supporter of technology integration and is currently running English Virtual Community, an e-group for teachers of English.

Below, a slideshow of few of the photos of the event made with PictureTrail (a discovery of Carla Arena for our EVO 2008 session wiki)

Cool Slideshows!

What makes a blog successful - Part 2

I successfully added topic archiving to my blog, though I haven't finished tagging all my old posts yet. I have also rearranged my sidebar, which was a bit messy after migrating to New Blogger.
Let's see the last 10 of the Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog and how they can help me improve my own blog.

11. Include a list of related posts beneath each post: the author of the articles refers to a Wordpress feature that allows you to list all related posts by simply typing keywords in a widget field. Blogger doesn't seem to allow this, but I've found a discussion on Blogger Help that could shed some light on how you can do it manually.
12. Allow users to contact you offline: I'm not very keen on displaying my e-mail address openly online. Readers can contact me via comments or Odeo voice messages. Maybe I should see if there's some kind of widget that allows them to send text messages to my inbox without revealing my e-mail address.
13. Present your real viewpoint: this is what blogging is all about in the end, isn't it? Express opinions and be ready to receive comments backing you up or disapproving of your ideas. The art of comment writing is to do so with respect and and open mind.
14. Write for your future employer: Good advice for young people, who tend to be too emotional and unrestrained when writing. Something that we teachers should include in Lesson 1 when teaching our students to blog.
15. Include a Top Posts section: well, well, I don't think I've written anything to be top of a list (YET). No use creating an empty section :-(
16. Provide an index: Even when my aim isn't to increase traffic on my blog (I'm happy writing for myself although this is not a very "blogish" concept, it'd be good to have a table of contents to see what I have on my blog. I'll have to search for a site map index plugin like the one Tom Johnson mentions in his post.
17. Get your own URL and match it to your blog’s title: I did this as far as possible when opening my blog, though I had to use a dash instead of a dot before the "ar" in the URL.
18. Include a Recent Posts section in your sidebar: I've found a Help page on Blogger that explains how to do this. Anyway, the date archive can be easily expanded to show recent posts.
19. Reward commenters for commenting: the idea is to have a list of the most frequent commenters to help build a like-minded community of readers. There's a Wordpress plugin that creates such a list automatically. Nothing like this in Blogger. But I like MyBlogLog list of recent readers.
20. Post often: This is perhaps the most difficult goal to meet for me. But it's a question of creating the habit, like going to the gym (I've been away from it for years!). I guess I'll have to go on reading about blogging and related stuff in order to find rich material for my blog. Now that the manual revision is over, I will have more time available for learning and sharing.

What makes a blog successful - Part 1

A few months have gone by since my last post. Many times I wondered why I didn't find a slot of time to write. A full-time commitment with a new job collaborating on the Latin American localization of a teacher training course manual was one of the reasons. On the other hand, I might have taken advantage of that experience to blog about it. And maybe I will in the future. But the pressure of the task did not allow me enough time to reflect about the experience. Too bad I didn't stop to record a few ideas that could be of use in other similar jobs. Perhaps this blog was not the right place for this kind of content. This made me think I shoul redefine what kind of blog I wanted and give it a new "profile".

Now that the manual is almost finished, I came across a message by Carla at Learning with Computers in which she recommended an online article by Tom Johnson in his blog i'd rather be writing. In this post called Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog, he discusses the following 20 musts which I will take as a starting point to :

1. Pick a topic for your blog: I started this blog to comment on the web tools I discovered and tried and their potential in language teaching. So I'll stick to this objective and mention it in the blog header.

2. Encourage comments: I should try to build a dialogue with my readers and profit from their comments and additional information. Tom recommends offering a Subscribe to Comments option, but the explanatory link he offers deals with a Wordpress feature. I'll see if Blogger has a similar alternative.

3. Make it easy to subscribe: My readers are able to do this with FeedBlitz, which I find quite easy to use and as you get new posts in your e-mail, you can't miss them.

4. Include an About page: My profile and photo are already there. I might add some new information from time to time. But the present information serves the purpose of telling my readers the kind of point of view they might expect to find in my posts.

5. Present your ideas visually, 6. Keep posts short and to the point and 7. Use subheadings for long posts a visually rich, concise and organized text, is much more appealing and easier to read. With all the information available on the Internet, I won't will stick to an article if it takes more than 10 minutes to read or if it is presented as a long text with no subtitles or images.

8. Link abundantly: I should say "Link appropriately". Too many links, too many chances of getting lost in the online maze. But Tom is referring here to linking to the blogs you quote in your posts in order to increase collaboration. Trackbacks and pingbacks are two terms I've seen before but don't know exactly what they mean :-(

9. Make headlines descriptive: Good point if we want to be fair with our readers. They should know from the title if the content will appeal their interests or not.

10. Archive by topic: This is much more useful for readers than archiving by date. I'll tag all my posts and see if I can create a new archive.

In a next post I'll reflect on the next 10 tips. I'll start working on topic archiving (is it possible with Blogger?) and investigating about trackbacks and pingbacks

Blogging for Beginners - Week 5

Let's suppose you're an expert blogger. Or at least have some experience blogging with your students. You can share your experience with the participants of this year's Blogging for Beginners EVO session. How? Simple! I will be in charge of week 5 in which we'll discuss how you can personalize your blog's template by adding widgets like chatboards, clocks, subscription buttons, webnotes, etc., etc., and all kinds of links (for more examples take a look at this blog's sidebar and footbar). What I'd like you to do is just send me an Odeo voice message, explaining what add-ons in your blog you find useful with your students. The messages received will be posted in our Blogging for Beginners blog and will be reviewed by participants to form an idea of how they can enhance their blogs' communicative potential.

Please use the link above or the one in the sidebar to send me your messages. Your help will be appreciated!

Subscribe to my blog with FEEDblitz

Elizabeth picked the idea from one of Gladys' posts. I saw it in her blog (Virtual=Real: FEEDblitz email subscription added! ) and decided to add e-mail subscription to this blog and Learning with Computers. Now you can enter your e-mail address and be notified every time a new post is added. You can also open an account with FEEDblitz and add as many subscriptions as you like, by simply entering the URLs of all the blogs you would like to get an update from. It's very simple and saves you a lot of time. Try it and forget about periodic visits to interesting blogs!

My two Brazilian friends, Erika and Carla, in their Blog It! blog, produced the following list of advantages of blogging in an EFL environment:

Why blogging?

• Writing for a real audience
• Extra practice of reading and writing
• Creation of somebody’s or a group’s own multimedia environment
• Students’ work can be read by their peers
• It builds up a sense of community
• The practice of English goes beyond the classroom
• The online environment encourages shy students to express themselves
• Students can get replies from all over the world
• Relatives and friends can see what is being done in the classroom
• No technical expertise needed
• It enhances creativity
• It is a rich learning space

I'll try to build upon it as my knowledge grows.

See this link for a list of pros and cons of blogging in the classroom.