What kind of blogging need?

[Carla Arena]

What are the blogging concepts that you're still struggling and would like to revisit here? Any suggestions for topics we could discuss? How can we help you?

Let us know and somebody will be there for you!

The Blogging Team

[anamaria]

I´d like to share a project Camila Sousa and I have started with our Basic 1 students. As you all know basic 1 students know nearly nothing and can hardly communicate in English. After a month of classes, we set up a Pownce account and helped each of our sts to do the same. It´s supposed to be a closed group where students communicate with their classmates and their teacher.

Each week, they´re supposed to follow a writing task after having received a model from their teacher. Our objective is to have sts start writing in English for real communication since the beginning of the course, starting off with very simple texts and hopefully by the end of semester they´ll be writing more complex ones. We´ve discovered that students are more open to using internet for learning English when it is proposed at the beginning of the course, the enthusiasm is super. I´m going to add a file with some example texts written by my sts during week one of the Pownce experience.

Oh, the weekly tasks will cover structure and vocabulary students have learned that week.

[Mary Hillis]

Great idea, Ana Maria! Using Pownce for your Basic class sounds like a great idea, and I like how your provided a model for the students so they know what kind of thing they should write about in their posts. How has the Pownce experience been developing since week one? Looking forward to your news,
Mary

[Kim]

Hi. This is Kim. I am still having difficulty using videos and audacity. I had to install Lame for Audacity, but I can not record MP3 from it because I need a file to open Audacity. I have no idea what is needed. A friend tried to help me and downloaded a TAR file to help compress/uncompress LAME but I still can not use LAME.

And, I find that downloading to YouTube takes so so so so long. So I have not done that either.

But most of what I learned in the course has been put to good use! I learned more in blogging4educators than almost any other course, despite being a "lurker" on it.

Thanks and look forward to Ning, esp since I am on another ning network which opened today. And that Ning is for work.

So, look forward to more, Kim

[anamaria]

Kim,

I had problems with audacity at first too. Have you downloaded Lame into the plugin folder in Audacity. If it´s not in the plugin folder it won´t find audacity to transform the audio into an mp3 file. Hope it helps.

What problems do you have with videos?

anamaria

[tesuque]

hi. i fixed the video problem. i think so, but i might have a question. do you use nero? what do you use? and do you end up coding the files mpeg4? if not, what code?

i will get to audacity later. it is too hard to describe on this forum.

thanks, kim

[tesuque]

also, do you recommend any online site to archive videos for a very long term process? i thought to do it on youtube but then i recall that sometimes videos have been deleted and i don't know by who or if youtube has stipulations for how long they save it.

thanks, kim

[Kim]

thanks. yes, i did lownload lame. yet when i try to save it on lame i can not. what am i to do? do i need a program to open lame? and/or how am i to direct audacity to lame folder beyond the click the folder method?

i put on a compress file TAR to use for the lame, as someone told me to do this. yes i don't know how to use it either as there are lots of files for it.

is there a different way. i can remove the TAR and download something else. but if i recall i can not open the lame without this additional file, maybe it is a ZIP?

i dont know what TAR and ZIP mean but you need one or the other to use LAME.

i found a video to help use LAME but still need to listen to it.

i will save the video question for later.

thanks, kim

[Joao]

This reflection about blogging is quite interesting. Have a look here.

[Mary Hillis]

Joao, Thanks for the link! The concept of blogging as a conversation is something that I would like to explore further too. During Blogging4Educators this year, I think Carla did a great job of demonstrating how connections can be made through blogs through tagging and other means. Just as participants in this EVO session learned about how to use blogs to make connections and conversations, our students would need some guidance on this too, I think. For instance, before blogging themselves, perhaps students could spend some time reading blogs, and the class could look at how the post and comments form into a conversation. Any other ideas on how to encourage interactions of this type on a blog with students?

[Joao]

Hi Mary,
I think you are right. And it's certainly a good idea to get students reading blogs and use a class blog to make posts and comments.
You can have a look at the discussion thread in my blog about this issue during EVO08 in the session SMiELT08. There are some useful ideas, I think.