One way I came up with is collaborative writing. Since Rita Zeinstejer suggested in her blog that blogging have the feature of collaborative learning tools. By commenting and exchanging ideas through experts and peers, blogging is one of the most effective way to share thoughts as well as enhancing learning ability. On the one hand, mentors or teachers can easily provide feedbacks on students' work; on the other hand, by watching how other peers are doing their jobs, students themselves also have a better understanding of the assignment or inspired by new ideas. Therefore, using blog for writing assignment is perfect for mediation, and offering feedbacks as well.
Another option is students can using blog for sharing something they read or write, videos or pictures they found interesting. Blogging can be used as a diary to keep important ideas and memories. A space to express their opinions on contents they are studying.
Overall, using blog not only can help students improve their writing skills on collaborative writing, summary, reviews etc., blogging also provide students a chance to be creative in language studying.
COMMUNICATE IN LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH
- Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions
- Standard 1.2: Students understand and interpret written and spoken language on a variety of topics
- Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.
Sha Yi, I definitely agree with the advantages of collaboration and feedback! Blogging is a great way for students and teachers - or students and their classmates - to provide and receive feedback in a different way. Do you have specific ideas for writing projects? I also like the idea of students sharing their opinions - they really take ownership of their writing. Good ideas!
ReplyDeleteI like your idea about using blogs to for sharing information and discussing about things that they have read or seen. I think that teachers could use blogs for a form or book club, where you can read a book or look a picture or video and students can use their blogs to talk about what they have read or seen. Great ideas!
ReplyDeleteI like your comment about letting students see each other's work through blogging. I think students learn a lot by see how others handle an assignment.
ReplyDeleteI never thought about collaborative writing approach. What I thought is only to collaboratively build knowledge database, between experts, who share what they already know and learn from each other. Your idea is new to me, and it is a very creative and interesting one. Of course I will try it in my future teaching.
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