Students in Taiwan also like to use blogs to record their lives and post photos on their blogs in order to share with their classmates. When I was teaching in Taiwan, I found that some students tried to use English in their blogs even though there might be some grammatical errors. I was so happy when I saw them use English. They would use simple words or sentences in their blogs and I think it is a good try.
English is an important language in the world and so many parents in Taiwan put emphasis on learning English. However, children don't understand why they should learn the language and they have no desire to learn. Many of my students told me that they won't go to America in the future, so there is no need to learn English. When I heard this, I felt so sad because I know they will regret in the future.
I would try to use blog or other web 2.0 tools in my classroom teaching. As a matter of fact, we seldom use web 2.0 tools in our class because we have to catch up the progress. If I can use it in my class, my students would feel interesting because no other teachers have done this before. I would ask them to write two or three sentences a day and they can write whatever they want. And then I would ask my students to give feed back to their peers.
However, there are some limitations to blog. Many students would go to cram schools after they go home, so they might have no time to do the additional work. What's more, students have to use computer so that they can post something in their blog, but some parents don't want their children to use computer so often. Therefore, there are many difficulties that I have to overcome before I start to use blog in my teaching. Hope I can have the chance to do what I want them to do.
I think blogging is beneficial in any school system. Students seem to be digitally connected all over the globe, and blogging appears to be a popular rising trend among young people. While we don't have to worry about most of our students attending cram schools after regular school, we do have to worry about most of our students attending extracurricular activities involving sports, music, theater, and multiple clubs. These have become a huge burden to many students. When I student taught last semester, I would often find that many of my students woke up at 5AM for extracurriculars before school, and would be at extracurriculars after school until 9PM or 10PM, then have about two hours to have dinner, complete homework, and prepare for bed. I often tried to combat this issue in English Language Arts by providing time in class for students to work on projects. I also would write hall passes for students during their free period to complete work.
回覆刪除If you want to blog in your classroom and are worried about students completing the assignment, you could set aside time (maybe 5 minutes) at the end of each class for students to post their sentences on their blog, or comment on other students' blogs using a classroom computer. As long as students have written their sentences ahead of time, they can simply copy them into their blog for their classmates to see. You can also assign blog groups with 5 students to each group. Students would be responsible for commenting on their group's blog posts each week.
I hope those ideas help and give you something to think about!
You bring up an interesting thought and one that I just take for granted - that being that most of the Web 2.0 tools that we have shared this semester are in English!! So, for countries (or in your case your students who don't want to learn English) what happens? Where are those tools? Is there a translater online that could be used to read the pages in another language - I think that is possible. But, interesting to note and to think about.
回覆刪除