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WeeklyThreadsWeek6

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Weekly Threads for Week Six

(Messages #1832-#)

 

This is a work in progress. Please be patient while the threads for week six are compiled. Thank you!

 

Visit our Blinklist for all the links mentioned during Week Six.

 


 

Week six Welcome Message from the Blogging Team and EVO announcements

Name Message

Gladys Baya

# 1832

 

Welcome everyone to the last week of our EVO workshop - B4B!

I can hear you cheering and clapping as you see the light at the end of the tunnel and probably start feeling you're not that much of a "beginning blogger" any more...

This week, after Claudia's encouraged us all to make our experimental blogs a true reflection of our uniqueness, we'll work on getting ready to apply what we've learned together either in our teaching practices, or to contribute to our own personal and professional development.

A new post in our blog outlines the aims of this week: http://blogs4beginners.blogspot.com/2007/02/week-6-time-to-blog-autonomously.html

On this wiki page you'll find this week's tasks: http://bloggingforbeginners.pbwiki.com/WeeklyTasks6

Basically, during this week, each of you will work on drafting and polishing a blogging project, supported by us all. There is also a survey to estimate group achievements, and, of course, an
"end-of-workshop" party, to celebrate your graduation as beginning bloggers!

That will be our only live session this week, and it's scheduled for Sun 25 at 18 GMT. Mark it on your calendar right now, and add your name to the database:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bloggingforbeginners/database?method=reportRows&tbl=7 if you can join us!

Have a happy week, full of blogging, learning and sharing!

Gladys

 

Paula Emmert

#  1861

 

Dear EVO Participants,
The EVO Moderators and Coordinators would like to thank you for taking the time to participate in this year's sessions. We hope you have found your time rewarding.
We would like to ask you to please take a minute to recognize the valuable time your moderators and guest speakers have contributed by taking a short (5-10 min.) survey that will help us plan for next year (link below).

<http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=754743341212>

Although you will receive this link in each session you registered for, PLEASE take the survey ONLY ONCE.

Thanks very much for participating in the EVO!

--Paula Emmert For the Coordination Team of EVO

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Still from Week 5

 

Blogs of the week assignment: Why sidebar was pushed away?

Name Message

M.Claudia Bellusci

# 1850

For Monika and those of you who have been wondering why Graham's sidebar has been pushed downwards in his EFL-Blog... stop scratching your heads!!! Here's the solution to Week 5 Quiz:

If you have a look at his post dated Dec.8th (http://blog-efl.blogspot.com/2006/12/one-reason-why-im-not-blogging-as-much.html), you'll see there's a picture there. OK, that picture is wider than the main column. So part of the picture goes beyond the column's limits and pushes the sidebar away from its usual place. The same might happen if you paste a long URL. So bear this in mind and use either of these solutions when having the same kind of problem:

a.. If you're having problems with a picture, make it smaller. There's been discussion here on this topic. You can use Easy Thumbnails (http://www.fookes.com/ezthumbs/) for example.
b.. If you've got a long URL, either link it to some text or use TinyURL (http://tinyurl.com/) to make it shorter.

 

Gladys Baya 

# 1896

 

I knew large photos could push sidebar away, but not long URL (I naively assumed they'd just get broken!)...


A similar problem has often happened to me with wiki sidebars, you know... The whole text is displayed at the bottom because the Sidebar has gotten so wide the text won't fit!  Blog and learn... :-D

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Sharing Profile

 

Name Message
 

Gladys Baya

 

# 1835

Andrea: if you're still working on this, your friend can start a blog (just choosing a name, as you all did during week 2, remember?), thus getting the chance to create his own profile, then hide that blog from his profile, and so have a profile that points to no blog (which can remain empty for as long as he wants).

Will that provide a satisfactory solution to your case? Another option would be to use your new account to create a profile that will show information for you two.... but I think that may have some drawbacks, as for instance the email address to contact you would have to point to just ONE of you...

Let us know how you finally worked this challenge out!

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Logo for your blog

Name Message

M.Claudia Bellusci

# 1842   Re: [bloggingforbeginners] Re: Wrapping up week 5

 

Daniel's additional tip got me wondering and I decided to do a web search and found very interesting blogs. You'll find top tips regarding widgets and templates. Here's the list. I'll add them to the Readings List on the wiki as soon as I can.
a.. Blogger Forum
b..
http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/newbb/index.php

a.. Beta Blogger for Dummies (Have fun with the Ten Commandments for Bloggers)
b..
http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com
a.. How to add Picture to Beta Blog Header.
b..
http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-to-add-picture-to-beta-blog-header.html
a.. Testing Blogger Beta
b..
http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/
 

M.Claudia Bellusci

# 1849   To Daniel

 

I've just been looking at my code to see what happened if I changed showaddelement=no to showaddelement=yes. But there's no such code string in my template. I mean, in the section that corresponds to the header. This is what I have:

<div id='header-wrapper'>
<b:section class='header' id='header' maxwidgets='2'>
<b:widget id='Header1' locked='true' title='Cyberteachers (Header)'
type='Header'/>
</b:section>
</div>

So I thought it might depend on the template you chose, but my PC froze when I was trying to change templates, so I gave up. Then I also saw your blog and I noticed you added a graphic to the header, but not in the form of a logo like the ones I added, but more like a banner. In the linjks I sent, I read the same instructions as regards the "showaddelement" tag, but they were mainly pointed at adding a graphic element rathar than a logo. I'll go on experimenting...

Elizabeth A

#  1921

 

--- In bloggingforbeginners@yahoogroups.com, "Claudia Bellusci" wrote to ivanusd:  I've just been looking at my code to see what happened if I changed showaddelement=no to showaddelement=yes. But there's no such code string.----------

I too was bothered by codestrings which didn't look like yours at all - I read that showeddelement means, as it says - the added element will shown when you go back to "page element" (from the "Edit HTML" in the 'template' section). but all I managed to do was to to put up the title section twice!
When you expand the widget code for the header, there is a default setting which sends you back to the fixed template you originally chose.... strange, strange... definitely needs more time to do to get to the bottom of it. I think it must depend on the template you chose to start with.

However, the internet is not really as worldwide as it pretends to be. There are "localised" versions of some things (my podomatic does not look the same as the one you showed us for example) - so it could be a problem of where you are determines what you can do..... I'd love to go into this further... says the white rabbit.

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Audio tools and some Q&A

Name Message
 

Veronica

#  1844  Problem adding an audio clip using podomatic
 
I know I'm a bit late with this, but I've only just now had a chance to get into the Week 5 tasks. I've been trying to add an audio clip using podOmatic. I've been following the tutorial, I get as far as the "Post Episode" step--that seems to be accomplished, but then there is nothing more--nothing about adding a badge or 3 steps to getting the word out.
I've tried everything I can think of on the site, but nothing seems to be helping me get this recording onto my Blogger blog!
If you have any advice, I would appreciate it.
 

Nora B

 # 1852  I want to have a place to get recordings with greetings from around the world

 
Well I have learnt many things and now I'm preparing a blog to use with my students this year. The idea is to have one blog where general topics will be discuss ( http://nora-facilitatinglearning.blogspot.com  )In this blog I will be the only one to post and students will be able to comment only. Then I will place links to the different class blogs (each group will have a blog in which I will be the administrator but they will be able to post (is this what it is called a class blog?).
Well, I have already written a welcoming post and I would like to create a voice message post where you record some greeting words for them. Here is my problem, I don't know how to do it. Is it an ODEO send me a message buttom what I need? I would like them to listn and from what I understand if I do so I will get the message in my mail
box, thus students won't be able to hear the messages. What can I do?

http://nora-growingup.blogspot.com/
http://nora-facilitatinglearning.blogspot.com/

 

 

Berta

 # 1855 Re: Voice messages- two ideas


Hi Nora, here are two ideas: you can either set a Mychingo box in your sidebar like Karim did: http://mydearstudents.blogspot.com/ look for blue box that says "My voice mail" (instructions on how to
place it are in: http://bleiva2003.motime.com/archive/2006-10  or you can create an account in Chinswing and have a thread like this one and link the URL to your blog either in the sidebar or in a post: http://www.chinswing.com/pages/discussion.aspx?id=223ff335-2ce4-4ab3-a872-39b7443be29ea4c9-54e5e6355795

http://www.chinswing.com/pages/discussion.aspx?id=54effa83-75d1-40c3-
Does this answer your request? I hope so.
Cheers ;-) Berta
 

Karim Ben Yahya

# 1854  Trilingual Maite

Dear Maite,

What a fantastic voice message from Maite on on my 'MyChingo". I Think you should all listen to it. JUST IMPRESSIVE. http://mydearstudents.blogspot.com
I have met so many people from Spain and I have never ever ever met someone who could speak THREE languages so fluently. My students were flabbergasted.when they heard it.
Thank you so much for your kindness and generosity.
I hope we can all stay in touch for a long time after this session ends.

Mary Hillis

#  1892 (to Veronica who has been trying to add an audio clip using podOmatic)

 

If I understand you correctly, you have already uploaded your audio file to Podomatic. Then, you should just go to your own Podomatic home page and click the play button for the desired recording. After doing so, a pop up will appear and you'll see something like, "want to post this on your webpage" and you'll get some html code. Copy this code and paste it into your post at Blogger. Hope that helps!

Fatemeh Nikui Nezhad

# 1897  (Is there an easy way to place audio files as it is placing pictures with www.tinypic.com ?)

 

Do you know of any site which hosts the audio files, the same as
tinypic.com for images, so as they enter their audios as easy as possible? I
guess using podcasts and odeo is a little bit hard. What is the html code for
real player?

 

Maite

#  1899 

 

I have used as a test http://www.fileden.com/ , which was very simple to use. You could try, it was easy to me. In my blog http://www.inoutandaway.blogspot.com there are some audio files if you open one of them you will get the URL and thereby the page where is hosted...this is actually how I got it from Karim! Good luck! you could also try a http://www.chingswing.com with your students as a discussion, however it is not really synchronous communication which actually gives them chance for lots of rehearsal, getting confident and not go into monologues...

Barbi

 

#  1904

 

Hi! I would like to add an audio file to my blog, like podomatic. But I don't have a microphone to record messages, I only want to put the file in my blog to receive messages. What can I do?

 

Berta

#   1917  Re: audio for Barbi (receiving messages)


Barbi, you can go to these sites, register, generate code and embed:
1) http://odeo.com/
2) http://www.springdoo.com/
3) http://www.mychingo.com/

So people will leave you messages and you won´t need a microphone for the moment (some mikes are quite cheap and work well and visitors will always like to hear a welcoming message from you, although not necessary)

Paul

#  1920   audio ... Mychingo

 

MyChingo.com will soon be replaced by MobaTalk.com This will take place during Q1, 2007 (http://www.mychingo.com/).

If you would like to be notified when we [Mobatalk] launch, send an email to launch@... (http://www.mobatalk.com/)

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Useful Sites

 

Useful Sites

 

Name Message
 

Nina

# 1839

 

My friend Kevin McCaughey has a great website! Check out English Teachers Everywhere at http://www.etseverywhere.com/?page_id=5

Carla Arena

#  1898

 

Just a page to make life even more exciting than it is! I just got crazy when I saw the so MANY tools I haven't even heard of...It would take me a lifetime to explore the list, but maybe you can find there something you were looking for.  Have fun!  http://www.go2web20.net/

 

Monica Veado

# 1929

 

Iit was impossible to resist Carla's impressive list of web2.0 links!
I decided to try Sitekreator ( http://sitekreator.com ), as I needed a website to get all the tools and resources together for my project (blog, wiki, forum, bookmarks, etc).
What a nice surprise! Very easy to work with, with very simple, straightforward tutorials, various options of templates and no need of html knowldedge to get your page! :)
It's still very much a baby-site, but if you want to take a look at what I've been doing all afternoon, the link is http://sitekreator.com/reviews .

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Insights and advice on Blogging planning

 

Name Message

Carla Arena

# 1873   Aspects to consider in blogging interaction in the classroom (To Ana María R.)

 

- If students are going to be evaluated, maybe there could be some kind of rubrics so that they know what to expect and what is being expected.
- Before they start blogging, will they all register in Blogger?

- Are you going to have one blog for the whole group?

- Will the students be invited as contributors to the class blog or will they only work in the comment area?
- Are you going to provide any tutorials? (they'll probably need some guidelines to start blogging)

Silvana Carnicero

# 1874    More aspects to consider  (Anna María R´s blog in teachers´ education to foster discussion)

 

- Collaborative writing would be a good possibility.

- How will students work with the comment feature, what aspects would you like them to comment on?

- Frequency of comments?  (in many cases students tend to publish but they do not read their classmates' blogs so there is no communication)

- Apart from word verification, include moderation of comments to play it safer.

 

 

Carla Arena

# 1888    Carla´s advice on working in the blogosphere from her own experience (to Janet http://afterclass-jtucker.blogspot.com )

- Create the habit of Blogging. How? I used to take a few minutes of my class time to take students to the computer lab to react to my posts or my collaborators'
- Surprise students with voice, video, a question...
- Your post should lead to interaction. One way to encourage that? Finish your post with a question that leads to reflection, that makes the student take a stand. Also, when your students are commenting, ask them to finish their posts with a question (this has proved to be a great strategy!)
- Have international guests to your blog. Students feel that they are really interacting with a real audience! And there's always a different cultural perspective...
- Invite other group of students to interact with yours. It spices up the interaction. The groups could read the same texts or read on the same topic with different views and then report and discuss certain aspects on the blog.
- Tease students with an image, a video, voice...
- Give feedback. Keep the conversation flowing.

 

If you take a look at my own posts, you'll see how I changed the way I blog with my students. Certainly, my students have profited more from my later style, and I'm sure have learned more, and have found their own ways of looking for information, thinking in English, and expressing themselves! Check the difference:

http://552ctj.blogspot.com (Here, there was no interaction. It was a monologue. My posts didn't ask for any reply on the part of the students. The info I had there could be sent in an email or presented on a regular webpage)

http://top21.blogspot.com/2006/06/how-we-met-each-other-we-were-from.html (here, the students had something to say. They wanted to share something with me, as they read something personal about myself. does it need to be that personal? Of course not! In this case, it's because I taught that group for a long time and we were really close as a group)
http://top21.blogspot.com/2006/08/welcome-back-top-flex-6-students-our.html
http://top21.blogspot.com/2006/08/boulevard-of-broken-dreams-check-out.html (These students were blogging from home in a totally open space. I didn't evaluate them for the blogging part. They did that as a way of improving their English. They were a group of pre-intermediate adults.)
http://internationalexchange.blogspot.com/2006/10/dear-all-madonna-is-trying-to-adopt.html (Myclass and Dennis Oliver's group in Arizona)http://internationalexchange.blogspot.com/2006/11/dear-all-great-to-notice-that-most-of.html (sometimes, when Dennis and I felt our feedback was an important one to the
whole group, we wrote it as another post so that everybody could see it there on the front page).

 

Just some insights from someone who has started not so long ago, has redirected her blogging style, and has been learning tons with all of you!!!

 

Carla Arena

# 1886  On topics to keep on blogging (To Linda)


Spirituality, contemplative education, critical literacy, and social justice - are perfect topics for blogging, for they can generate much discussion, interaction and reflection. So, maybe one goal you could set for yourself is to post within a certain frequency and have an audience that will keep interacting there. I'd love to keep reading your deep and enlightening thoughts!
Beijos, Carla

Silvana Carnicero

#  1903  On comment moderation (Silvana to Karen)

 

I would only like to comment on two points. First, I would moderate the blog in some way because although your students are adults and will not make improper comments, you can always get comments from outsiders who are blog users and  this can cause a bad impression on your students. Secondly, I would invite other students you may have contact with their teachers to post to your blog to make it richer. The more you share, the more you learn.

Paul

#  1911 (Paul to Nora)

 

I gather that you will be blogging with teens, and will administer a collective blog for all students, parents, and teaching colleagues to read:
http://nora-facilitatinglearning.blogspot.com/

Students may be able to comment on the collective blog. So may parents and other teachers. Students will have posting privileges on other blogs that you create and administer separately for each class. You may feed those blogs together (RSS) for display on the collective blog. It sounds like you will have a lot of comment moderation to do, depending upon how many 1st/2nd year students (and parents) get involved.
You suggest that students are unlikely to have Internet access at school, yet will work in pairs on their class blog posts. I'm having a bit of trouble envisioning how that might work, when and where, and how you might equitably evaluate pairwork on tasks "done at home."
I understand that you are working on a rubric to evaluate "students' participation, creativity and use of the [target] language" (English for speakers of Spanish). I really hope you'll share a draft rubric with us before our gig is up!
Cheers, Paul

Paul

# 1913 Discussing grammar problems in blog (Paul to Nora)

 

I would like to know how you settled upon one of the foci for the Facilitating Learning blog that you spelled out in an initial post, namely, "to discuss grammar problems" (Welcome Back! http://nora-facilitatinglearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/welcome-back.html , paragraph 2; February 13, 2007). That's at:

Could you share a few of your insights to help us imagine connections between grammar talk and the real world? Cheers, Paul

Nora

# 1928    Discussing grammar problems in blog (to Paul)

Thanks for reading my project and blog so carefully. Well you had some doubts.
You are right I will have to do a lot of moderation but as I am working with teenagers I think it is necessary, especially because belive it or not, at the school I am working this question of Internet
is always seen as "troublesome". I do not want, at least in this first experience to risk future projects. I have two groups for 1st year and two for 2nd.(about 20 students each group)

The next point was evaluation. I know it won't be easy to get a fair practice, that's why I still do not have the grid. I will ask one of my coordinators at school to help me as he knows a lot about rubrics.
I hope he can help me to get a good tool.

" ...Could you share a few of your insights to help us imagine connections between grammar talk and the real world?"

What I was thinking about and may be was not clear enough is. In the blog I have already created there will be some post in which I will point out some grammar problems that are typical for my students or Spanish speakers students in general and explain the correct use/usage . In the comments section students will be suposed to ask questions to clear out doubts.
When referring to "getting into the real world" I was thinking of the post they will publish that will be read and commented by people outside the classroom.

Finally I do hope to make it really worth reading. Best Wishes, Nora. Blog for the project: http://nora-facilitatinglearning.blogspot.com/ First Blog: http://nora-growingup.blogspot.com/

Paul

# 1930  Getting teenagers to write about grammatical points?

 

I admire Nora's decisions to take up blogging with four groups of about teenagers each. In her follow-up post: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bloggingforbeginners/message/1928

Nora clarifies and expands upon institutional pressures magnifying a need for moderation to avoid Internet-related trouble. She explains on-going local collaboration to develop a student blog activity evaluation rubric suited to pairwork on blogs outside of class. I assume that student access to the Internet from home will be no problem.

On the whole, I gather that her plan will lead to the peaceful coexistence of a supreme institutional blog on grammar points, with individual class blogs where students will have opportunities to communicate with extra-mural audiences.

Now, if I were a student, to which blogging venue would I like to devote my time; or, put another way, how much coercion will it take to get teenagers to write about grammatical points? Cheers, Paul http://pabspotpourri.blogspot.com/

 

Berta

# 1916 On comment moderation

 

It is true that Blogger is open and public and anyone could find one´s blog, but it is like searching for a needle in a haystack. Chances are very few people will hit in one´s blog, especially if no tags are used. It is just a random chance. What it is common is spam in comments and that is why word verification is needed to avoid automatic comments.

I set my first Blogger blog 3 years ago and it was completely open. I got very little spam and a couple of comments from people I don´t know, none of them were inappropriate but invitations to visit their blogs (which were not inappropriate either). I then set word verification but not comment moderation. The same thing goes for my Motime and Wordpress blogs. I have been gladly surprised by people who come by and simply thank me because they learned something from the tools I mention (these are not class blogs but self-tutorials on how to do things because I forget how to do them very easily). I guess that if I had a class blog for children, I will definitely have comment moderation. With adults, I think it would be up to the teacher and participants to decide. Blogging is basically social and I feel closing doors limits audience, but it also depends on the objective of having a blogging activity in a language course.

 Claudia Ceraso

# 1919  On comment moderation

 

The word verification (captcha <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha>) has the purpose of identifying spamming through machines. If you are using moderation this is -perhaps- not that necessary.
Spamming may occur sparingly for a new blog, yet I would recommend using moderation and advising our students to do the same. I have been more spammed in my less visible blogs.
Fortunately, moderation was on and I was able to check the content. The links they were trying to post in my blog comments led to sites and pictures of dubious teaching purposes...

Claudia Ceraso, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Carla Arena

# 1923  On comment moderation (to Berta)


I share the same view as you! I haven't moderated comments on my blog, too, because sometimes I'm not online and my students are. So I want things to go
straight to the blog. As I receive the messages in my mail, if there's something inappropriate, I just go there and delete it. Not a big deal and it hasn't happened with that much frequency. Word verification helps a lot against spammers. So, I'd go for not listing the blog in blogger, having word verification on, and unmoderated comments. If you have a blog for kids, then it's another story...

Silvana Carnicero

#  1926  (to Emsal)

 

Dear Emsal, You have a very nice blogging project. I think it is a very good idea to have two classes interacting through a blog. I also think that the blogs you're planning to create will be a place to visit in search of new materials by EFL teachers around.

 

Nina

#  1937 (to Karen)

 

Since we are both teaching in the Washington DC area and both in higher ed settings, our classes have a lot in common. I have one suggestion: you may wish to use word verification in order to discourage comment spam, which ranges from simply annoying to pornographic. Comment moderation also enables you to reject unsuitable comments, which can come from unlikely sources even if you don't advertise; a search engine may include your blog in a search for "american culture," for example! Comment notification will enable you to know via email when your students have posted a comment; an aggregator such as Bloglines notifies you of a new student post, if students are blog members. Speaking of which, do you plan to have student input via comments only, or will students be able to create posts as members of a team blog? This was not clear to me from your description.

I like the idea of posting information about events and places you think the students might like to visit! You can encourage them to post their reactions to the things you've recommended, if they do them.

I also do not like to force students to post; however, my experience is that if they are not required to post, some of them won't do it. Requiring a certain number of posts during the semester is a good idea. I'd be interested in hearing how it works!

I like the offblog clarification or correction in response to student requests. (You may be surprised at how few the requests are!)

Newsfeeds and weblinks are great additions to a blog that students will use! I have a dictionary widget on mine, too, but have no idea if it is used or how often.

Thanks for sharing your plan. I hope to hear more about how it works either here or perhaps at the WATESOL Fall Convention, if you are there! 

 

Nina

# 138 (to Janet)


I was surprised to find links to the articles in the blog titles, which usually just link to the individual url of that post. How did you do that?

Blogs are great ways to elicit ideas without focusing too much on grammar and correction, because it is awkward to correct a blog post or comment!
How many students do you think will actually read the extra articles if you don't require it?

I suppose you are a voracious reader yourself and will just be recommending articles you would have come across anyway; otherwise, it would be daunting to keep this up at a rate of 3-5 articles per week. When you distribute extra articles in class, do most of the students actually read them?

I wonder if students will be inspired to recommend articles to the blog readership. That would be great!

You can put the general introductory material in the "Description" section of the sidebar (Go to Settings/Basic" in your dashboard), and you can choose to place that at the top of the sidebar where it will stay no matter how many posts are added. It's easy to do in the new blogger (Click on "Layout" in the dashboard), and I think that would
be better than changing the date.

Paul

# 19   (to Janet)

 

Janet suggests not making blog reading and commentary obligatory for advanced science students at uni. She wants to encourage voluntary participation and spontaneous contributions, instead. She plans to promote her After Class blog through email to former students, make announcements to current students on a course management system, and talk it up in class. With regard to student interest, Janet writes: "If I get a reasonable response, I will then suggest that interested students find and add their own articles and give them authoring privileges."

Until students get authoring privileges (or their own blogs), further suggestions from them will have to come either though email or in comments on the After Class blog. Perhaps Janet could make calls for new articles in the introduction to her blog, in promotional email messages, and in routine (say monthly) blog posts to which students
could attach their recommendations.

 

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Miscellaneous

 

Name Message

Erika Crunivel

# 1864    Re: Bee and Aaron's presentation audio and slideshow
 

You can find the links to the audio of Bee and Aaron's presentation and also to the slideshow in our wiki at http://bloggingforbeginners.pbwiki.com/Live%20Sessions
However, I was not able to upload the audio together with the slides, so there are two different links there. I'm still trying to find out how to fix it.

 Claudia Ceraso

# 1866   Suggestion: customize mail signatures

 

I had never used Yahoo groups before. One thing I have found is that few people customise their mail signatures. When someone mentioned problems on things they tried to do on their blogs, I wish I could have been able to see what they meant. With a bit of effort, scrolling down the mail history I found the link to the website in question. Not always lucky, though. When I discovered some of the blogs, I left comments. Only today, did I have an epiphany moment and thought: Claudia and Gladys must be using a TAG on Blinklist. Yeah!!!!  So I discovered this: http://www.blinklist.com/blogging/participant_blog/
So Gladys and Claudia, will you be including a final page on the wiki with a blogroll including just the blogs born out of this B4B sessions? I think it would be nice to come back to it in a few months' time and see how much they have grown. What do you say? Incidentally, "In, out and away"... what a splendid name for a blog!
Regards to you all B4Bers wherever you are. Pleasure joining this group and wiki.

Claudia Ceraso Buenos Aires, Argentina

 Claudia Ceraso

# 1871 E-mail signature customization in Yahoo and Gmail

 

Adding text to your signature is quite easy. It all starts at the top, right hand corner of your screen.

In Yahoo
-Go to OPTIONS
-You'll get three columns, scroll down the middle one and you'll read SIGNATURE.

In Gmail
-Click on SETTINGS at the top of your screen
-Then click on GENERAL

In Hotmail
-Click on OPTIONS
-Then click on the second tab called MAIL

(If you use Outlook Express, you can configure as many signatures as you want and then choose a predetermined one. I do not you, I gradually stopped using Outlook.)

What I like most about signatures is to be able to quickly go to the e-mailer's blog -it can be so telling about a person. I also think it is interesting to include your city and country. Context and content tend to be related. (Practise what we preach in class...)
If you write a letter to a blogger in Japan from Buenos Aires, your signature will be telling them they'd better give you a days' time to answer!!!


Best, Claudia Ceraso Buenos Aires, Argentina

Karim Ben Yahya

# 1868  What´s next: A poll

 

I have created a poll asking you about what we can do beyond this session. Let us all cast our votes to find out. Please, suggest any other possible poll questions .
http://mydearstudents.blogspot.com/2007/02/lets-find-out-how-addictive-this.html

Karim, Tetuan.

 

Paul

# 1902  Blogging Project Plans    Week 6 - Time to blog autonomously!

 

Find projects at: http://blogs4beginners.blogspot.com/2007/02/week-6-time-to-blog-autonomously.html

Mary Hillis

#  1910  Posting Bubbleshare album in Yahoo 360

 

I have FINALLY succeeded in posting a Bubbleshare album to my Yahoo 360 blog. As some of you know, this is something I had been trying to do for quite some time
and was finally able to do (after seeing Nina's slide.com photos in her Yahoo 360 page and researching tips in the Yahoo 360 Forum YG)


The trick was checking a little tiny checkbox that says "show html"; after doing that you can paste in html code!! It was so easy ... Anyway, please see the results at
http://tinyurl.com/38rylc

You'll see some photos from a day trip we took to Kyoto to see the Golden Pavilion and a National Treasure too. The weather was beautiful! I'll try to move into Week 6 soon :) Mary H

Emsal

# 1912   Conference workshop in Turkey - coursebooks in other countries and cultural issues

 

I intend to prepare a workshop at a conference in Turkey about blogging to introduce it to teachers, how to use it in ELT.It is something known,but not a lot. I am thinking about a live workshop (setting up a blog together ) The articles, and blogs ofB4B will be very useful. I am excited about the subject.

Finally, this is not something related with the subject but I am searching about it, how do you choose the coursebooks in your country (I especially wonder countries like Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Spain, etc.) How do you handle the cultural issues? What do you think about the global textbooks and Anglo-American textboooks?

Happy Blogging. Please keep in touch ...

Silvana Carnicero

# 1926  Course books  (To Emsal)

 

As to your questions on how we choose textbooks in countries such as Argentina, I can tell you my experience. I prefer topic - based books which can engage students in global issues. I always try to include extra material to make them work on local aspects. For instance, last year I worked on famous places and cities with my students in class 9th. the cities in the book were most of them American or British cities so as each of my students had a blog, they had to write an entry on a city of their choice in Argentina.

Paul

#  1915  (answering # 1738)  Re: Table in footer? [Yup - sorry to keep you waiting!]  (Paul to Gladys)


Yes, Gladys, that is a table in the footer of the student blog that you pointed out nearly ten days ago. Sorry your query got left hanging for so long.

Below is a snippet from the beginning of the table in source code. Further below is the URL for the blog page from which I retrieved the code (in your message).
Though I don't recall which browser you prefer, with Camino (Mac) you get _into_ a page, from the page in question, by opening the browser's. View menu, and then selecting View Page Source (a new window opens).
Once you get to the equivalent page source view with your browser, try searching for "Our Class Blog" and you should find yourself deep in the code near the beginning of the HTML table.
Cheers, Paul

...[snip]
</div><div class='widget HTML' id='HTML1'>
<div class='widget-content'>
<div align="center">
<table border="1" bordercolor="#003366" width="434" cellpadding="1"
cellspacing="1" align="center">
<tr>
<td width="143"><div class="style4 style1 style2" align="center">
<div align="center"><span class="style5"><a
href="/http://wonderfula2b.blogspot.com">Our Class Blog</a></span></div>
</div></td>
...[snip]

--- In bloggingforbeginners@yahoogroups.com, Message 1738 of 1914
(February 15, 2007), "Gladys Baya" <gladysbaya@...> wrote: > One of Beyza's students has a table at the bottom of his screen in his blog: http://eozden.blogspot.com/
> There he has links to all of his partners and class blogs.  Is that a table in his footer, designed with HTML, I wonder? I'd like  to try something like that for some of my footers, if so...  Gladys

Paul

# 1918   To correct ...

 

Thank you, Carla, for a thorough recap. of error correction issues and strategies in Message #1714 of 1917, and on the B4B wiki: http://bloggingpractices.pbwiki.com/Errors

I'd like to add a funny story that I heard from a blog-/tech-savvy colleague last night, to show how even earnest instructional intents can go haywire.

Early on, in one of his blogging classes last year, my colleague and peer mentor recognized and isolated an example of student writing that undoubtedly reflected use of an automated translation tool. The example was something like this: "It went to the movie last week."

He picked up on that because automated Japanese to English translations often come out riddled with unreferenced its corresponding to unspoken personal subjects in the vernacular.

In a post on his class blog, he used that and similar examples to gently and graciously point out straying students' ways of generating blog posts. He wanted to deflect and diminish indiscriminate uses of automated translations tools. In not so many or difficult words as this, he explained that sentences like the example above were faulty approximations of global English usage.

However, his post backfired. What he found the next week was an even larger number of students, whose awareness of automated translation tools he had unwittingly raised, using automated translation tools indiscriminately!

Blog and learn; learn and blog!

Carla Arena

#  1922  To correct  (To Paul)

 

LOL! You made me laugh with the story, because sometimes it's just what happens!!! I have two little kids and it happens to me when I tell them NOT to do something, that's when they are eager TO DO it!

Your friend's story is one that leads us to reflection...Maybe instead of writing a post with the example of the student and talking about what they shouldn't do and showing them the translation tool, it could be a good idea to go the other way around. At least, that's what I try to do...Take some of the class time to show students some of the online tools and the strategies they can use to write better, to solve doubts, to look for collocations...I show them how to work with online dictionaries, thesaurus, google search, google images, corpus, etc...The adults love that! Even some teenagers will do a good job using those tools!!! :=))

Blog and learn; learn and blog! Thanks for sharing.

Paul

# 1932  Trade-offs between tooling-up time and blogging-down time

 

The round-about approach Carla explains (above in # 1922) sounds wonderful, albeit time-consuming. With only 90 minutes of class time each week I'll need to carefully weigh the trade-offs between tooling-up time and blogging-down time.


Two other individualized approaches spring to mind. In comments attached to wayward student posts you could write either:
1. Do you mean, "You went to the movies?" or  2. What is "it?"

Those alternatives represent another trade-off: more communicative, or fewer keystrokes.... 

Linda Neas

# 1925  New book "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Web Tools for Classrooms" by Will Richardson

 

Just wanted to share a new book that my Associate Dean gave me. "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Web Tools for Classrooms" by Will Richardson,
published by Corwin Press, a Sage Publications Company, (www.corwinpress.com).  ISBN 1-4129-2767-6
It talks about much of what was covered here and gives some good tips. Enjoy!

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