alice’s posterous

This week I have decided to try to use it as often as I can in an attempt to make my students visit the blog and leave comments. I have noticed they do visit the blog but they have not yet stepped into the commenting phase. Do you have any suggestions to make students comment on a blog?

If you haven't tried this yet, please do. You can find microphones at a very affordable price and they are so easy to use with Audacity. You can then save your recordings as .wav or.mp3 files and easily embed them onto your blog or website. You will see your students being motivated to SPEAK ;)

What about you? what do you do to make your students speak in another language?

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In an attempt to get my Spanish students to practice their Spanish outside the classroom, I decided to set up a blog for them to be able to view, read and listen good stuff related to Spanish culture and language. To also share and view their work. The main objectives of this blog are for more students to keep up with their Spanish and to also make them share their views in the "comments" section. Especially when they listen or read other students' works, they will be able to compare, assess and see how work can be improved.

At my last school, I already set up a school blog using Edublogs. I chose http://edublogs.org/ because it was free and I suppose their tag line "Blogging for students and teachers made easy"! drew the attention on me. Nevertheless, it was not that easy to set up and at times, it took a long time to download resources.

My personal blog is with http://posterous.com/ and I find it so much easier to use, especially if you're not a geek :)
All you have to do is to write an email as your post (as I am doing now) and send it to Posterous. Posterous takes care of the rest. If you want to send a video, you attach it to the email or copy the URL into your email and Posterous will show the video in your post. If you want to send a picture, just copy the image location or attach it to your email. Again Posterous will show the picture in your post. If you want to send a slideshow or a document, attach it to your email, Posterous takes care of the rest.
I did a lot a recordings this year with students using a little microphone plugged into my laptop and Audacity. I save the recordings as .mp3 files and attach them to the emails I send to Posterous. Posterous insert the audio files into the new posts and this way, students can listen to their own recordings (which they looove!).
So far so good... They are not many comments made by students yet, but I know it takes a while and it is a learning process. The blog is http://spanishblog.posterous.com/ and of course, your comments are welcome as well :)

What about you? which platform do you use to blog and why?

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I was reading Isabelle Jones' post about her nomination in the Top 100 Language competition when I discovered I am also nominated but in a different category: language teaching.

I am still  shocked (in a happy way ;) as I started blogging not even a year ago thanks to my dad. I must admit I thought blogging was for pretentious people who wanted to show off their work. Again, I didn't understand the concept of sharing and collaborative work! But my dad pushed me and at first I found it hard to think of ideas to write in my blog. Also, I use Posterous which is the easiest blogging platform as all you have to do is to send an email as your post. When I started blogging last summer, Posterous was new and it feels now like I am part of the Posterous family with Garry Tan and Sachin Argawal co-founders of Posterous.

But my blog wouldn't be nominated without YOU, my regular visitors who always add meaningful comments to my posts and make my blog a great place for discussions and conversations rather than a boring monologue! So a big thank you to Marcy Webb, Shelly Terrell, Sherry Amorocho, Anne Hodgson, my dad, my mum and all the kind people who give their time to comment on my blog :)

By the way, the voting is opened until the end of the month. The best 5 language blogs of the overall top 100 list will receive a Kiva starter account. Kiva lets you help people by financing projects with micro credits.

Click on the voting button below or on the sidebar:

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I found this fab quote today:

"A few of my keener students have asked me to give them with advice and hints to help them keep their Spanish going over the summer, in anticipation of next academic year. Earlier today, over at http://www.asisehace.net/blog, I provided them with a list of websites containing audio and video resources that will help them keep their Spanish ticking over and, who knows? They might even learn one or two new things. The list is copied below:..."
from http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=1187
You should read the whole article.

What about you? Do you have a list of fun and engaging resources to learn a language?

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Last week, we finished the topic about school with my year 7 classes so I took them to the computer room and asked them to type some of the topic's key words on Wordle.

I had already tried this lesson previously in the year and it had been a success, and this time because my students knew the tool already, they enjoyed it even more ;)

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I am not the best at being organised, especially when it comes to paperwork (because I can't stand doing administrative stuff!). Usually, all the paperwork is left as a huge pile on my desk and then comes the day when I have to sort it all in one go!

To get over this paperwork madness and other tasks I have to, my sister (@astrinity on twitter) found this great web 2.0 tool  called Ta-da Lists which enables you to create to-do lists online. So even if you go away and don't have your computer with you, you just need an Internet connection to access your lists. You can make lists to yourself or share them with others.

So far, I have made several lists including paperwork! and posts I want to blog (because I will think of an interesting post I want to blog and then will forget about it the next day!). Now, when I have time I look at my list called "blog" and start writing a post on my gmail account. If I don't finish writing it, I save my email as a draft and continue later. I forgot to mention that my blog is on Posterous which allows you to send an email as a post. In front of each of your list names, they are grey circles which are bigger or smaller depending of the number of items you have on the list. When you are done with an item, you tick the box next to it to remove it from the list.

This tool helps me great deal getting organised in my life and updating my blog regularly.

And you? Do you use any web tool to get organised?

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