World of Blogs and Wikis – Week 7

         Two of my favorite modules from “The Interactive Web” are Online Writing for Teachers and Students, and Collaborative Online Writing. Understanding what blogs and wikis are, comprehending how to use them, and recognizing their potential for language teaching and learning have made grasp the importance of these Web 2.0 tools and its features as learning technologies. Online writing offers teachers and students the ability to publish freely on the Web. For teachers and students, this means that we can use blog to record chronically our teaching and learning occurrences, experiences, and reflections. Moreover, we can use to promote and develop writing skills and competencies. For instance, I can create a blog for a particular class, post entries about their work in class, and have them to participate by commenting and reviewing what they have done and learned. This kind of activities creates a sense of a learning community among students and promotes and enhances learning both within and outside the classroom. Likewise, with Wikis, teachers and students get engaged in collaborative writing by giving them the ability to create content and to edit, review and asses each other’s work. For instance, Wikis can give my students the opportunity to observe, monitor, interact, support, evaluate and learn from each other in the pursuit of language improvement; one student can help another proofreading (marking the grammatical errors and corrections to be made; peer reviewing). In conclusion, lessons and activities based on online writing, either collaborative or individual, and for any purpose, are useful, motivational and effective for improving writing skills, interacting, and sharing. Both Blogs and Wikis are highly creative, interactive, communicative, meaningful and effective approaches to help students develop their language skills.

Something else…

          As both a teacher and an eternal student, I have found writing blog posts for reflection very engaging. In fact, my blog for this course has made me rediscovered my inner writer. Yes, I love writing, and I will keep on doing it regularly from now on; I have a lot of thing to reflect on. But I have also discovered a passion for reading about others. There have been a lot of personal reflection throughout this course and I have love reading what others have to say about their experiences, and also to comment on them. When reading from Miguel, Girola, Pavle, Jesus, Alejandro, and Dian, I learned a lot; and for that I feel deeply thankful. I want to continue reading from you guys after this course finishes. I will subscribe to your blogs guys using RSS aggregators and follow your Twitter and Facebook accounts. We are a Learning Technologies Professional Learning Network. How cool is that?