Sightings- Iris Chan
Social Media Sightings – Iris Chan
Blogs and ESL Learners
Since I am involved more heavily in the English courses at our school I noticed many teachers enjoy using blogs for their content. Even in our ESL courses, blogs are also being used. In the beginning of the year, ESL classes were first introduced to blogs. The students who were coming in did not have the language capability to function entirely in English. Blogger made setting up the blogs very easy because the site could be easily translated into the ESL’s native language. The teacher still managed to get output in the form of blog entries in English, but since the support in the classroom was not one to one it made the initial setup go a lot smoother. As students gained more language skills, the teacher made it mandatory for the blogger process to be switched back to English. It made the introduction of new technology less intimidating for the students and shifted the focus back to the task and the purpose of the lesson.
For Fun
In my Beijing classroom, I had the luxury of sitting in for a class where the teacher was absent. Since most of the students were finished their assignments, many of the students started to have free time. I noticed most of the girls and some of the boys engaging in a online game called “Happy Farm”. Each student had their own farm where they could grow different vegetables and fruits. Other students could then go virtually into their farms and farm as well. This was a huge phenomenon. The students would comment and interact with each other. They would build a farming community together where the topic was the current “in” thing to grow. When I read this week’s introduction about how the online space is creating a new frontier. This really struck me. At the same time these students were engaging in the learning at school and their identities as a student, they were also a farmer somewhere in this new frontier. They have commitments elsewhere and they have a different life or lives somewhere online that is very different from their daily lifestyles.
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