Bloggers unite!

While I think it's great that Martin has discovered wikis (see his post), don't let what he says put you off starting up a class blog. They can be great fun for you and your students if you use them for task-based work.

I always start off a task in class time and then ask students to complete it (if necessary) for homework. Then, when you next book out the CALL Room, make sure you have a new task ready for your students, so that while they get on with that one, you can talk to them individually about the problems they had with the first.

Here's some ideas for your first blog tasks:

• In pairs, students decide on song in English
  
• They look for it on youtube and then copy the code they'll find next to the video
• They create a new post on the class blog, embed the video in it (by pasting the code in Edit HTML) and then give their reason for choosing the song
• They do a google search for the lyrics and add a link to them on their post
• They then look at their classmate's postings and comment on their choice of video
• Now they go to this karaoke page (thanks to Gary for this one) and see if they can find the song they chose. They get a set a set of headphones with a mike and sing along to it. (If their song's not there, they choose another.)
• Now they check out if the singer or group they chose is on myspace and also if there's an entry on wikipedia
  
• They create a new post. Using the information they've found, they write about what they think is interesting about the history of their singer/group and say why they think they have been successful. Warn them to put it in their own words - no copying and pasting allowed!
  
• Finally, they write a comment on their classmates' postings saying what they think is interesting about the lives and music of the singers/groups they chose.

My Pre FC1 class is currently working through these on their blog, if you'd like to take a look at the results.