My Student Blogging Project

I really enjoy Blogging. So why haven't I posted anything for the past week? Well, I've been busy doing work on a project I am developing for my students.

The project is about writing Blogs and using the Internet to help my form 2 students learn English. The site I am using for the students Blogs, Classblogmeister, is a pretty simple, basic site. Not everything is laid out for you, so knowing how to do some simple HTML coding helps to get the best out of the site.

The great advantage of the site is that the teacher, in this case me, can have complete control over everything published. You can have as little or as much control over things as you want, or your administration requires. In my case, they want me to have complete control over everything that gets posted to the site. Fair enough.

Whenever a student writes something and wants to publish it, it gets sent to my e-mail account for review first. Once I read it, I can either publish it, or send it back to the student with an explanation and/or asking that corrections be made. Even comments can be moderated, so that they don't write nasty things about each other on their Blogs, which I know is just what they would do.

I have been experimenting with our class Blog. Right now the site is a mess, I know. I have been putting all sorts of things there, because I am experimenting and trying to see how things work. Not everything that is up there now will stay there. Some things are there because I needed to try out certain sites, to see how they worked, and whether they would work with the classblogmeister site. For example, my first attempt at podcasting.

I made my first attempt at podcasting with my boss, Mr. Wong Teck Ee. He's got a great name for someone interested in the latest technology. He's also a great guy. We spent a couple hours on Friday, playing around with the Audacity software, and recording a test podcast. The Audacity recording software is pretty simple to use, but you can also spend hours playing around with all the gadgets and extras if you want. It's a great piece of software to use if you want to do podcasting, or do some recordings for your classes.

As for where I am storing my podcasts, I am using Gcast. It is a really simple way to upload a podcast and put it on your Blog. With my form 2 students, the simpler, the better.

I also posted a video of our sports day, on Vimeo. It is also a pretty simple way to upload video and put it on the class blog. It is simple and fairly painless to use.

There also a couple of slide showsI made on Bubbleshare, a spelling bee game for the kids to play, and a link to a YouTube video that we might be using later on.

I also posted the first assignment for the kids to do, which is to look over what I think is one of the best examples of a class Blog I have seen. After they do that and get some ideas, I want them to write some ideas about what they want to do with our class Blog. I won't be too concerned with their grammar in the beginning. The idea is just to get them to start writing, and enjoy what they are doing. Later on I will be more strict on things like spelling, grammar, and organization.

So that's what I was up to. Now it is semester break, and Trien and I are going to be running off to KL to our respective embassies. We have some business there that we have to take care of before the baby is born. If we don't there's going to be a mess of trouble later. Since she is in her second trimester, and feeling pretty good, we have to take care of it now. She might be unable to go with me later.

The Most Unusual ESL Help Wanted Ad I have Ever Seen

I like to browse through the English teaching job listings on the internet, just to see what is around.
This is definitely one of the most unusual job listings I have ever seen. Too bad I have another year on my contract, otherwise I might be running off to Peru to be an assistant bottle washer!

(I edited out all the contact information. If you want to apply, and teach south of the remittance line, just click the link above to go to the original post).
__________________________________________________________

Your Stomach has thinking cells; so follow your gut to Peru!

Posted By:
Date:

Perhaps life north of the remittance line fuels you with purpose. Perhaps everyday you see the effect that you have on the people around you. Perhaps you live a life that touches reality in such a way that you feel yourself to be truly alive, instead of going through the motions of a lifestyle. Perhaps the thought of working on the front line of customer relations and making that long back-biting crawl up to middle management fulfills that ravenous longing your soul.

The rebellion is on-going. Twist that evil spell back on them and give it a new spin. (You know the one that I am talking about…the one that they put on you when you were wee…Eeaybeeseedee-eaeffgee-achaijaykay-elemenohpea-kiuarress-tiiyouvii-dabelyouexx-whyanzee)
You’re not going to take this lying down, are you? They killed the lord of the land of the dead…Donne and battered, they spun him off into discordian space…It’s just another reduction. Don’t let them lower your denominator too.
Join up. Take a stand. We’re looking for a few good primates…with notes of passage from higher educational gods and monsters…with burning desire in the cockles to spread the word…with some time to kill below the remittance line.
Become the last (and first) line in the ever shifting sands of the real, and you will be truly blessed.
• Blessed with roof
• Blessed with green pieces of paper
• Blessed with eternal adulation (and in some cases a small shrine of rough unhewn stones)

Step into the New Year proudly, and join the bottle washer’s campaign.

Respond cordially if you would (or aggressively if you must) to

(I took out the contacts name)
Chief Bottle Washer
----- Language School
------, Peru

Tel/Fax

Email:

I Got A Blog!!!

Okay- First off let me tell you who I am.
I am an itinerant ESL teacher, who is currently teaching at a government residential school in Taiping, Malaysia.

Let me tell you where in the world I am.

Right now I am in the Philippines:

In the Province of Cebu, on Mactan Island, in Lapu-Lapu City, in Bario Buaya.


(Ignore the bright pink arrow, as it points to a resort which is much too fancy for us to afford. We are located where the red line with the black circle is, a much lower rent district.)

Why?
Because it is vacation time. I am married to a Filipina I met while I was teaching here.


(This is my favorite picture of my wife, Trien, on the beach in Phuket, Thailand during a vacation).

Her family lives in Buaya, and she hasn't seen them for almost two years. Filipinos families are very close, unlike American families. It's not easy for her to be separated from her family and friends, especially since she had lived in the same house for almost her whole life. So we are spending our six week vacation here.

Why am I writing this Blog?

Because today, Pearl Harbor Day, my wife and I went walking along the "beach", which is actually a mangrove swamp that has been cleared near the Cebu International Airport. Buaya basically sits just right of the end of the runway. So while the planes were taking off, we went looking for "shells", meaning shellfish to eat. She knew what to look for, and where to look for it. You are supposed to look for two holes close together, then reach into the mud and pull out a tiny clam. Everytime I tried to get a clam, I came up with a handful of muck, and either something singularly unappetizing or really scary looking. Meanwhile, my wife was having a good time, reliving her childhood. There was no way she was going to leave there without a bag full of tiny clams for supper. It was obvious I wasn't going to be much help, so there was nothing else for me to do but relax, slog through the mud, and think deep thoughts. That's what I did- walked along through the muck, trying to avoid getting sucked under, and thought deep thoughts. I thought many deep thoughts. I wished there was a taperecorder inside my brain so I could record all my deep thoughts.

The one deep thought I could still remember afterwards was- why don't I write a Blog? Then I can share all my deep thoughts.

Even better- I won't ever have to e-mail anybody again. My friends and family can just drop by, and see what I am up to. Or more than likely not drop by, then e-mail me asking if everything is Ok, and ask me what I have been up to.

So it was off to the internet cafe by multicab:

before I forgot that deep thought.

So here I am, making my first try at Blogging, and sharing all my rants, interests, deep thoughts, etc. with all of you, the unknown internet proletariat.

I just hope I won't be the only one reading my Blog. So tell your friends, tell the neighbors-

"John's got a Blog!!!"