Dear Freinds! This BLOG is devoted to ways and strategies of using different Internet resources for teaching English. Here you may find some practical advice on setting up blogs and other resources for use with your own classes:
●Types of blogs used in language teaching
●Tips for managing learner blog settings
●Keeping students interested
●Some ideas for activities
●Pitfalls to watch out for, etc.
Blogging as one of Internet resourses is becoming increasingly popular as a language learning tool. So, why should you blog with your students? There are many reasons why you may choose to use weblogs with students. Nowadays, blogs can display photos, audio and even video, showing how a simple text-based blog can be used to great effect with your English language learners.Besides, blogging is one of the easiest ways to publish student writing on the WWW. It's almost as easy as sending an email.
I think one of the main reasons is to provide a real audience for student writing. Usually, the teacher is the only person who reads student writing, and the focus of this reading is usually on form, not content. With weblogs, students can find themselves writing for a real audience that, apart from the teacher, may include their peers, students from other classes, or even other countries, their parents, and potentially anyone with access to the Internet.
There are some other reasons for using blogs: what are they????
Here are some possible suggestions of what can be done using a blog: 1.Project work. Each of the pupils has to do his or her own part of the project.The pupils do research, find materials and publish them as comments to the blog entry.In this way the pupils can see what else needs doing.Then as a separate entry,the project is put togeher and published online. 2.Written assignments.The teacher gives an assignment with detailed explanation of what needs to be done,and the pupils post their responses as comments. 3.Discussions.Each of the pupils can be asked to give only arguments for or arguments against.This conversation gives more time to think and their research and deals with the stress of having to speak in front of the class.This can be used as a prepared stage for a big discussion.
I am lucky to join this community of enthusiastic and creative teachers. I agree the Internet technologies seem mysterious today but it‘s just because of they are still new and unknown for us and we can’t manage them properly. Anyway I I believe many of us have an experience of using the Net. Now we have a good chance to enlarge our knowledge and put it in practice to make English lessons more exciting and beneficial for students. A good beginning makes a good ending. Good luck!
Dear colleagues! First I’d like to say that I am happy to find myself in this community. It’s a great pleasure to have an opportunity to exchange opinions, thoughts and experience with like-minded people. Unlike Natalie I’m not surprised at such a little number of bloggers here. I quite agree that our job doesn’t leave us much time for self-education. But still, the main reason, to my mind, is that for most of Ryazan teachers the subject of this discussion – blogging – seems rather unknown and mysterious. I don’t feel like offending my colleagues at all because I’m one of those teachers. I have very little experience in blogging (our English Club blog was set up three weeks ago) and I’ve got a great number of questions about how to manage it, what activities to use etc. Undoubtedly, blogging is a powerful communication tool though most of our schools do not have the sort of access to the Internet to make on-line blogging a practical reality. Anyway, happy blogging!
Dear Friends!Its a very good idea to create this web-site special for English language learners and teachers. Nowadays the most of them can improve their teaching skills and competencies because it constitutes an impotant part of educational process. The teachers have opportunity to recieve much information for all interests, to read many articles and comment them, to take part in forum. Today its popular to use information technologies during the lessons at school that attracts more attantion of pupils. I havent some experience in blogging but I suppose to gain it during our seminars thats why I agree with all reasons mentioned here!
Dear Nets and our Teacher! I am very glad to be registed on this Site too. But I am surprised that there are only few people here. I agree the first reason is that our teachers are too busy personalities but the main reason, I think, - the lack of their experience in advanced computer technoligies. A Le-ka and her pupils have already had some experience in blogging and are proud of having their own page and thier own net community and as for our school there aren't enough computers and I always have some problems to show a computer presentation or something else for a lesson. In spite of these problems I suppose that our seminars are necessary, we can learn new things and our Website is a good way of communication and practice.
I have some experience in blogging. Last year a group of my pupils was responsible for the creation of a blog. It was based on the students’ English projects, translated for the Russian audience, to participate in one of the city festivals. English was not the language of the blog, it was the language of the initial material. But nevertheless the blogging strategy was trained and learnt. And the conclusion is the following: undoubtedly it is very motivating and stimulating, it involves a lot of creativie activities and encourages powerful interaction. Their task was to take up a problem, develop various ideas in order to involve the readers into a discussion. They tried to present the information in as an attractive way as possible, not only reporting but conducting surveys, working out questionnaires, organizing interviews, making videos, and photo albums. The interaction within the blog went at different levels: the members of the team co-operated with each other, visitors participated in a dialogue with the authors, besides they started arguing with other readers’ points of view and even suggested us discussing things that interested them. Some posts were presented in the blog just because our guests wanted to share their opinion. The discussion of the problems and the blog itself moved into a popular web-site “VKontakte” and the “sister” of our blog, the group with the same name “STAR”, appeared there. The authors of the blog were very much interested in their work. They were very creative, productive, enthusiastic, never tired, never complaining, never bored (such work takes much time and efforts). And certainly they felt very proud of having their own page and their own net community with supporters or opponents. This year our blog is living its” English life”… and I’ll send a post about it a bit later.
I fully agree with you and I'm sure that the teacherVoice site will be really useful for both current and potential EFL teachers, they will benefit a lot from it. As for using Blogs as an EFL learning tool, I must admit that I was a bit skeptical of this technology at first. However, after having used it, I can only encourage other teachers to give it a try. But alongside with its advantages and benefits there are lots of pitfalls to watch out for! For example, it is difficult to use a blog for correcting pupils' mistakes if you don't have moderator's rights, isn't it? Student written work can be corrected only before posting to the blog, or you as a teacher can do class correction sessions using works published in the blogs. Do you consider that difficulty a big disadvantage of Blogging as an EFL teaching tool?
This sounds really welcoming and motivating! I think I must learn how to create Blogs and how to work in Blog environments. I hope your ideas will help me start my own blog and encourage my students to create their own ones. I agree that there are many reasons why a teacher of a foreign language ought to use blogs for teaching it. One possible reason is this - to motivate pupils to use English for everyday communication. This can happen when they do their homework. Blogging is a good way for pupils to practise their language skills. The teacher can explain how to write or what to write about and can even give clues and other language hints for pupils to use. I think we will learn how to do it with the help of the TeacherVoice site.
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to join this community of enthusiastic and creative teachers. I agree the Internet technologies seem mysterious today but it‘s just because of they are still new and unknown for us and we can’t manage them properly. Anyway I I believe many of us have an experience of using the Net. Now we have a good chance to enlarge our knowledge and put it in practice to make English lessons more exciting and beneficial for students. A good beginning makes a good ending. Good luck! 
I don’t feel like offending my colleagues at all because I’m one of those teachers. I have very little experience in blogging (our English Club blog was set up three weeks ago) and I’ve got a great number of questions about how to manage it, what activities to use etc. Undoubtedly, blogging is a powerful communication tool though most of our schools do not have the sort of access to the Internet to make on-line blogging a practical reality. 
