Larry Ferlazzo's edublog

I was very impressed with this blog.

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org

I have already used some reference material he cited in one of the classes I am teaching.

Introduction

Hello!

I'm Janet, a Canadian ESL instructor. This blog is designed to record my reflections throughout my coursework on the University of Oregon's E-Teacher Scholarship Program's "Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web". Please feel free to add your comments!

I first used blogs in my teaching a number of years ago when blogger.com was the hot new thing. The advantages of blogs were that they were a novelty, they encouraged writing fluency, and they helped students write to an audience other than the teacher. As noted in "Blogging for ELT" http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/blogging-elt , blogs were also helpful in creating a sense of community among the users.

However, blogs were added on as an adjunct to the main coursework. I found reading and commenting on all the student blogs took much longer than I had anticipated. As time passed, the students, who were young adults, became more interested in posting links and photos than actually doing the writing assignments. Now of course we have Facebook and other social networking sites as well as blogs to help students network with others.