Saturday, January 29, 2011

Blog #2 - Blogging Safety

There are several things students should keep in mind when they engage in blogging, or any other internet-based activity:


  • Remain as anonymous as possible.  Do not publish your full name, your school's name, your age, your address, or your phone number.  You should also not give this information out to anyone contacting you over the internet.  Anyone who needs this information would be able to ask you in person.
  • Do not give details regarding your routine or your location.  Do not post schedules for your classes, or announce where you will be after school or on a weekend.  Do not post about vacations or trips you are going to take (although you can post about them afterward).  
  • Verify and modify your Friends list and/or your Followers.  These should be people you know.  If you do not know them, delete them.
  • Check your privacy settings.  These can be modified by the website administrator from time to time, so check every few months to be sure they are still what you think they should be.
  • Notify a teacher and/or a parent if you are experiencing bullying online.  Bullying can occur in person or on the internet.  If you are being bullied on a blog or in any other internet-based way, tell an adult.  No one deserves to be bullied in any way.


(Some of this information was derived from the article Privacy: 8 New Year’s Resolutions for Protecting Your Privacy Online, by Tammy Blythe Goodman)

Blog #1 - Uses of Blogging in an ESL Classroom

To be honest, I'm really a very private person.  The idea of blogging kind of freaks me out a little!  I'm one of those people that even has my Facebook account completely locked down.  That being said, however, I do think that blogging is a good tool for an ESL teacher.

I believe that even if our students are comfortable with us and comfortable in the classroom, there might be things that they still will not verbalize, even if they have the ability.  I can see blogs being a place where students have the ability to express themselves on whatever issue they want to talk about.  It could be anything from sports or a family event to frustration with some aspect of American life or homesickness.  I think that giving the students that specific space to let certain ideas and feeling flow will allow me as a teacher to get a better insight into my students.  It will allow me to address any issues that may arise, and it will also allow me to explore topics in class that may be more in line with interests they express in their blogs.  As the NYS Standards include the need for students to be able express opinions (for example, see Standard 3, PI1 - Form and address responses to ideas through . . . writing), I think that this is a great use of blogs.

Next, I think blogs are a great place to have students publish their work.  When I went to school, we had bulletin boards, and the teacher would staple our work on the bulletin board to display it.  Now, we have blogs.  A student can publish his or her work on the blog, and can ever receive feedback on it.  I can envision assignments like yours, where I require that all students comment on work that other students publish.  This would give even more feedback to the students that just my own as the teacher.  I think this would help to build a sense of pride in the students, as well as foster a sense of community in the classroom.  It would also address NYS Standards, such as Standard 3, PI4 (Evaluate students' own and others' work individually and collaboratively, on the basis of established criteria).

Finally, while the previous two examples have been focused on student blogs, I think there is also a place in education for a teacher's blog.  I can envision having a blog where I post links to news items or activities that I think would be of interest to my students.  Perhaps we could even track events in students' home countries.  I would need to cater my blogging more to the content of the class and the particular students that I would have, but again I think that using blogs in this way would help the students for a bond, in particular a bond with me.  They would know that I'm not rolling out the same curriculum I used last year, but I am paying specific attention to them.  This, I believe, will again make them feel more comfortable in my classroom.  It would also fall under many of the categories associated with Standard 5 - Students will demonstrate cross-cultural understanding.

If I had to align these activities with NYS Standards, I'm sure that I could.  The standards and performance indicators are so broad that I believe you can always find something that will work.  The biggest benefits I see, however, are that students will be excited about this, and that they will feel more comfortable with the other students and with me.  When you are asking students to engage in something as potentially uncomfortable as speaking, reading, writing, and listening in a language they are not proficient in, that comfort level is crucial.  (At least in my opinion!)