Blogging - Interactive Comprehension Building

Most of us at least have a general idea of what a blog is; here I hope to share with you some of the possibilities blogs offer for building comprehension for ELL's, as well as hint at some of the other myriad of possibilities for you classroom.

Herrell and Jordan reccomend using a powerpoint as a technological means to build background knowledge, but I think the blog is much more versatile.  Most of us are bored out of our skulls with powerpoints, aside from the fact that you have to load them onto each computer your students will be accessing them from.  Blogs, on the other hand, are on the web, meaning all of your students can access them simultaneously from, say, the computer lab, or at home if they are able.  Students can add to them (millions of possibilities), making their contributions instantly accessible to the rest of the class.

Although the emphasis of Herrell and Jordan's chapter is on building background knowledge and/or vocab, I will lead you through setting up your own blog and familiarizing you with a few key features you may want to use with your students.  In a sense, our background knowledge will be the ability to navigate and use blogs, but you can use blog for any of the things the text suggests (creating web links, pictures for vocab, etc.), as well as many more, which we will discuss at the end of the presentation.