Will it work?

The following activity is thought to be used with a group of elementary students after they have been working in class on the topic of leisure activities. After a few comments have been written I will challenge them to try to find other sports or activities that are not very popular in our country, but hey find interesting and tell us about them.

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY…

It is not about calling 911 All you have to do is check this out




Parkour: Cat Leap

This is the first time I heard about parkour. I really enjoyed watching this young man doing that, but I particularly wouldn’t like to try it nor to see my son doing it. I find it very dangerous. They don’t wear any sort of protective devices. Not even a helmet.


How about you? Had you heard about it before? What do you think about it ? Would you dare to give it a try?

My project

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

In order to avoid beeing like the man in the picture. I want to start with a short step

I have decided to create a class blog for a specific group of students in my country as part of my research project. I am doing a masters in ELT and Multimedia, so I want to try the blog with these students and see how they can benefit from it. I chose this specific group, because they just started learning English last year and they have shown a poor level of achievement. I hope that through the implementation of blogging during a period of time, they will be more motivated to learn the language and also that this practice help them improve their academic performance.

As this is the first time they will do something like this, I am going to start and administer the blog. The topics we will talk about will be related to the syllabus. I do not intend to teach them grammar or vocab, but to provide some space where they can feel free to express their feelings and opinions. I will add links related to places where they can revise the grammar and vocabulary they are learning in the classroom and do exercises. This experience with bloggin4educators has certainly given me the chance to explore very interesting and useful links I have found while visiting my partners and tutors´ blogs.

The students in this project will spend one hour a week in a lab, but I expect them to be so engaged in the project that they will keep writing comments and trying things out in their free time. I do not want students to be evaluated for their posts, not during this first stage, because I want to see how motivating this activity can be and the best way of finding out is to make them feel free to visit the blog whenever they want.

I know for sure that I will embed some widgets, but I have not decided which ones yet. I know I have to make it very visually attractive and include video and songs, always with a pedagogical focus that do not spoil the fun, of course.
I hope I can keep in contact with many of you, to receive suggestions and continue learning.

About my country

The first time I came to England was about twelve years ago and I remember how uncomfortable for me it was when I mentioned my nationality, because people immediately associated it with narcotrafic. I did not blame them as they only heard of Colombia when there was news about assassinations, bombs and kidnappings among other manifestations of crime. It was very surprising for me when I heard last Monday that a famous singer, who had been in the news for expending huge amounts of money on Cocaine, had been invited to Colombia to see what is the reality behind that fancy drug and there he was reporting his experience in Panorama, a BBC News television programme.

I would like to share with you some positive things about my country. We have the privilege of having two coasts (Caribbean and Pacific) and an island called San Andres. The variety of climates allows us to grow different kind of vegetables, fruits, cereals, coffee, cotton. Most important of all, Colombian people are friendly, outgoing, hardworking, there are a lot of talented artists such as Fernando Botero (sculptor and painter), Juanes and Shakira (pop singers), footballers and writers among others. People who come and visit us have a good time and fall in love with my country.

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Have you ever experienced bad publicity of your country?

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Wasting precious time on line? RSS solves that problem

The first time I came across RSS, I thought it was just one more in the huge list of terminology related to computers that you never manage to really understand, but just manipulate. But after watching the video "RSS in Plain English" produced by The Common Craft Show. I can certainly state that the Rich Site Summary is a very useful tool that allows you to use your time effectively, because it tells you when new content has been added to the sites of your interest that you previously selected. It is also of great value in the blogging classroom as it helps you develop scanning sub-skills in your students, avoid the risk of your students feeling overwhelmed with the large quantity of information available, makes them approach the information more critically so that they can decide if something is worth reading or not and consequently favours writing skills as the continuous reading practice exposes them the elements of how on line audience should be addressed. The following article very clearly illustrates the importance of RSS in blogging.
The Technology of Reading and Writing in the Digital Space: Why RSS is crucial for a Blogging Classroom

Do you agree that it is worth using it?

Growing on line

Going through the mails and following links inside this blogging for educators community I´ve just joined and from which I am learning a lot, has taken me to very interesting places. The following is one I want to share with you, because it deals with an issue that concerns us not only as educators, but also as parents. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/

I hope you find it interesting and why not starting a little discussion about it?

Why am I doing this?

I am creating this blog as part of a course. And I am doing the course, because I am convinced of the advantages of using technology in the classroom. I consider this learning experience as an adventure, because I am not very good at using computers, but the best way of facing it, is trying things out. If they work I will be glad if they don't I will try a different way until I succeed. I also hope to get in contact with fellow teachers who have had experience in working with blogs in the English classroom so that me and my readers can learn a lot from them.