My new born blogs

Hi everybody, I created two blogs and I'm very proud of me!

I conceived the first for my colleagues of non linguistic disciplines who were my students last spring. So I wanted to support their learning activities during the summer.

For the other I had in mind my students (aged 14-19) who study literature but are never so willing to read. So as a sort of class library where to share ideas, comments, reviews and suggestions.

Both blogs are open to anyone... and a colleague of mine has already logged in as a follower. That was quite exciting!
Please enter and have a look, comments from you are really welcome.

http://www.claudiasclassroom.blogspot.com/
http://www.class-library.blogspot.com/

My favourite blog

This is one of the sites I visit most frequently: http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/
Russel Stannard has often come to Italy for lectures and I have always loved to hear him speaking. His blog is really helpful.

A Word Search Puzzle

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Task 1.3. blog evaluation

The blog "an EFL notebook" (http://eltnotebook.blogspot.com) by Sue Swift is dedicated to ELT as the title itself clearly states. The addressee too are clearly defined for the same reason, it has a simple and professional layout, even too plain, but it is not very easy to read because there are too many posts and they are kept in their original length.
It is not easy to say if the postings are regular because I couldn’t find any exact dates, there is only a general reference to “recent postings” classified by year back to 2005.
There are only a few links to other sites, none to other blogs. People cannot leave any comments because the author apologizes for having taken the box off (she received too much spam).
The postings match the purpose of the blog, even if they deal with many different aspects of ELT and it’s not easy to read.
In my own blog I would leave room for comments because I think that sharing and feedback are the two most positive aspects of this activity. I would design it by keeping posts short and not leave them expanded.

And if my mum can do it...

For those of you who read about the person I most admire, have a look at my mum's blog Dr Abby Waterman MD.

blogs about clil

One of my present interests is CLIL methodology, so I looked for blogs about it and I decided to evaluate this:
http://acliltoclimb.blogspotcom/ : it has quite a lot of interesting material, even though there is much advertisement in the middle of the page, which draws the reader's attention away from more interesting words, but I guess that's a way to finance it.

Task 1.3 Blog Evaluation

Here are my thoughts on the two blogs I looked at for the task of evaluation.

Teflfgeek was interesting cos I'm curious about how technology can be expoited in the EFL classroom.
The layout and clear. I liked the tags 'word cloud' style. Postings were regularly updated and it was possible to make comments directly underneath each posting. The layout of the information on the right-hand side was clear because each section was divided. There was also lots of links to other blogs. However, I'm finding that many blogs tend to link to the blogs of the same people (Carol Read, Scott Thornbury, Nik Peachy, Jeremy Harmer etc...). BTW I couldn't find the name of the creator(s) of this blog. Did I miss it?

Web2literacy is a blog directed at ESOL teachers in the UK and created by Richard Gresswell. I used to work in this context so was curious to look at the contents. The blog has some interesting ideas for using videos in the classroom and links them in well with wallwisher (an idea also posted in telfgeek). The layout of this blog was not that clear. It was possible to leave comments but finding the link was not so easy (as it was located in the column on the right and not under each posting). The photo in the banner was stretched and slightly distorted.
I liked some of the practical ideas though! :)

Another blog great I came across ...

It was lovely to see Ceri's blog. I know she did this course some time ago and it also prompted me to do it too. Seeing the results of what she was able to achieve is encouraging. I read a couple of her interesting postings and sent a comment.

Thanks for reminding me about Onestopblogs! I've seen it (of course) but had forgotten it was there and how useful it was.

My cup of tea

Here are a few blogs I would recommend...

1. I attended Ken Wilson's workshop last year in Harrogate. It was part of the YLT SIG pre-conference event and I found his activities really useful. Since then, I've been reading his blog kenwilsonelt.wordpress.com/


2. Lindsay Clanfield's blog http://sixthings.net Lindsay impressed me at the Pecha Kucha event and made me find out more about his blog. He also visited Serbia this winter when he gave a talk on Global and I honestly enjoyed it. It's a real shame the 6 things project is over/closed.

3. David Crystal's http://david-crystal.blogspot.com/ How can you not be fond of him? :)

4. Jeremy Harmer's http://jeremyharmer.wordpress.com Jeremy's books were obligatory reading during my university studies and I just wanted to read more and more...

5. Carol Read's http://carolread.wordpress.com/ One of the YL blogs that I enjoy reading, pay a visit to find out more...

Friends Reunited

Thanks for reuniting me with Ceri Jones through her great blog. She did this very same course last year, she says! If you don't believe me, look at the 'about' tab on her blog.


I also really like Cecilia Coelho's A Box of Chocolates. Impressive layout and what a good title.

Promise to check out the Egyptian blog tomorrow... it's very late now. And I must upload a photo too.

A useful blog

Try this blog. It is one of the best local ones in my country:

http://esdaucegyptteachers.blogspot.com/

Waiting for your feedback. Cheers.

Welcome to Our Course Blog!

Hi all

Welcome to our Course Blog on Blogger.  This is where you can post your thoughts on Task 1.3 and anything else you fancy.

You can also experiment with Blogger before you start your very own blog in Part 2 of our course. 

Have fun!

 PS
The funky heading above is created with Icon Scrabble.