Another e-mail subscription service

Blogging and sharing brings a lot of rewards. Thanks to a comment Hala left in my previous post, I decided to visit her blog and leave her a comment in return. But before I did so, a widget in her sidebar called my attention. It's ChangeDetection, an e-mail based notification service you can add to your blog or website to let visitors know when your page changes. What's more, they can monitor a page under certain conditions, for example if they want to be notified only if text has been added (or removed), or if added/removed text contains specific words.
It looks pretty similar to FeedBlitz, which I use and like a lot. Will have to explore further to see if there are any differences.

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.

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!

Odeo message from Anita

Anita is from Slovenia. I met her at the Blog in EFL sessions earlier this year. She used to be a regular visitor to my blog and left this Odeo message after adding herself to my map. You can find the link to her blog in my blogroll.

powered by ODEO
Odeo gives you the HTML code of your messages, so you can post them in your blog and share them.

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.