Wednesday 8 October 2008

Thinking of doing a class blog? Think again!

Well, at least consider doing a class wiki instead.

Fergus and I set up a class blog with our adult advanced 1 students last year. It was quite successful in many ways - the best bit was when they got into writing restaurant reviews. Click here to have a look.

But there are 2 downsides to the blog format. 1) Students don´t get any say in how it´s designed and organised - perhaps this is why they don´t really contribute unless really pressed 2) You´re restricted to just 1 page in effect.

I´ve decided to try doing a class wiki this year and although I haven´t met the class yet, I´ve begun setting one up using the site called ´wetpaint´. There´s not much to see at the moment apart from my corny profile but click here and have a look. The adverts are a bit annoying but it´s got so much more scope than the blog - most importantly you can add as many pages as you like. Also, by its nature it´s meant to be collaborative so I´m hoping students will feel more comfortable starting threads, discussions and creating new pages.

Any thoughts or ideas?

Let me know if you want help setting one up.

1 comment:

garyrobert said...

Simple idea to get things going is to put some general knowledge questions online, which the first person on has to answer, obviously by searching online, then once answered they need to put up their own set for the next person. These are then answered by the next and so on. The questions can easily be checked and edited as it progresses. Collaboration, practicing basic web skills, grammar, peer correction and learner centred all in one activity! Well maybe...