helianlingzi

What challenges did Soares face when using blogs with her ESL students, and what lessons did she learn? How does she feel about using blogs with students in the future?
The challenge was that the students didn’t actively take part in the blog posting and discussing. One reason is about technology problems. Some reported have problems with passwords or not receiving her invitation email; some have problems when becoming members and posting messages. The other reason is that some of them lack of time to visit the blog at home. They looked forward to receiving messages and commenting orally on what had been posted, but would not write replies at home or join in the blog as members. The ones to leave comments were mostly teachers, not language students.
Through exploring and practicing, Soares learned that it is necessary to tutor student on basic operations. The students need hand-on experience in their computer laboratory. In addition, the teacher need the knowledge and experience to choose the right platform for needs of both the teacher and the students because the students’ level of expertise, interest in technology and understanding of what an educational blog is may vary greatly. Therefore, the teacher should be ready to account for that diversity and accept the fact that blogging is a new reality in practically all classrooms worldwide. Besides these, Soares realized that there was no strict relationship between the amount of posting done and the value her students gave to the blog.
Soares thinks it is useful and helpful for teachers and students if the teacher understands the situation of students and uses the target language in meaningful learning activities
Levy describes several types of technologies Choose one of them and describe how you might want to use it (or have used it), and discuss some of considerations that need to be taken when using this technology with ESL students.
I would like to use mobile learning because it is continent to take and easy to learn. I may send message about information or assignment and receive comments via mobile phone. In class, we can use mobile phone to look for articles and view video files. When we go outside, they can use mobile take photos, record dialogue with others, and send question to me. One consideration is small screen and inconvenient keypads, which is mentioned in the book. Meanwhile, the most important thing is that I must think whether every student has mobile phone, and the mobile phones that they have have the functions I may use in class.