Blogging All the Way

Today's intelligent use of technology includes blogging. Almost every professional conference and every issue of a professional periodical offers discussion of how to use blogging to enhance student learning. In fact, the latest CATESOL News carries an informative article by Diane Wallis of City College of San Francisco, who shares how simple it is to set up a blog site and how she has used blogs with her ESL students. She offers a couple of her own blog examples: http://dwallis.edublogs.org/ and http://dkwallis.edublogs.org/.

How are other ESL teachers using blogs in their classrooms? Diane provides the following examples, among others:

• http://www.sacbee.com/220/story/846880.html - This is a newspaper feature story about a blog-using ESL teacher.
• http://sallygatisblog.blogspot.com/ - A blog with fairy tales and songs as teaching content.
• http://english4work.blogspot.com/ - A blog about careers for VESL students.
• http://sanfranesl.blogspot.com/ - A blog for computer-using ESL students.

Closer to home, our very own Kevin Staff, an instructor in the night General ESL program in San Marcos, has been using blogs with a twist. Unlike most blog-using teachers, Kevin teaches his level 5 students to set up individual blog sites of their own. Check out some of their blogs for this semester here:

• http://thateslguy.blogspot.com/ (the teacher's blog)
• http://myo-honest.blogspot.com/
• http://boris-bbabic.blogspot.com/
• http://mbamoradi1.blogspot.com/
• http://alexa-student.blogspot.com/
• http://erasmogbye-bygc.blogspot.com/
• http://javimich01.blogspot.com/
• http://fllor.blogspot.com/
• http://lennyluc1985-lennyluc.blogspot.com/
• http://marimar-student.blogspot.com/
• http://sofia-mybeautifullife.blogspot.com/
• http://angel-mora.blogspot.com/
• http://byron1988.blogspot.com/
• http://bel-bubulee.blogspot.com/
• http://bojana011.blogspot.com/
• http://macarioraymundo.blogspot.com/
• http://liz-reyes.blogspot.com/
• http://lavidaesunratito-dora.blogspot.com/
• http://naka4ever-love33.blogspot.com/
• http://romanopalacios.blogspot.com/
• http://phuc-tran.blogspot.com/
• http://vzea.blogspot.com/

I'm sure there are other colleagues who have used either a class blog or individual students' blogs. If you are one of them, would you share your creative ways with us here? And any and all teachers: What can a blog do for ESL classes that may not be achieved effectively by other, more traditional means of learning? Let's brainstorm some more specifics together here.