Tech Talk Tuesdays: A Guided Tour of Blogging part 2

When: Tuesday October 23rd, Melbourne, Australia time (gmt+11)

About the session: Blogging is an essential digital literacy in the 21st century. This session will be an extension of the recent “Guided Tour of  Blogging”. This session will be structured to suit the needs of the participants but the following may be covered:

• why is blogging an essential digital literacy?
• the importance of categories and tags in blogging
• how to add those wonderful widgets to the sidebar eg clustrmaps, weather, google translate, countdown etc
• the importance of commenting, appropriate commenting
• establishing an audience
• how to expand a blog’s readership
• how to create digital portfolios through blogging
• tips and hints for successful blogging
• where to find out more

Click on this link to listen to the recording. Please come along with your questions, experience, expertise and join in the conversations.

A backchannel for ESL

Further to previous backchannel posts, the point at hand was really “could a backchannel be used in an ESL speaking class (English as a second language).

A backchannel, using  eg Todaysmeet,  could be used in numerous ways in the ESL classroom. Students or participants could:-

•  share in real taking notes on the content of the speech
• get a group of students to write in the backchannel the speech content in both the spoken language and the native langage
• translate all or part of the speech
• Using postive feedback and appropriate language,  comment on the accent used, speed of speaking, understandability, general delivery of the speaker etc
• Student evaluation of the speaker and their speech or conversation
• Students could add a question in the backchannel and the ESL speaker interpret it into English
• note any confusion with translation, or words not understood at all
• the teacher could go back through the chat to ascertain the understanding of the audience, the confusion, the notes gathered etc and where further teaching or learning is required.

What ideas do you have for using a backchannel in the ESL classroom? Could you please share them in a comment below. Thanks