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Blogs: Free ESL Materials.com

Blogs: Free ESL Materials.com

10 Ideas for Class Blog Posts Class blogging is becoming ever more popular as a fantastic way of encouraging young people to write with a purpose, for a real audience and receive genuine feedback. At its best it’s assessment for learning in action. So what’s not to love? Well, although it’s really simple to set up your class blog, sometimes it can be a bit hard to think what to get your class to blog about. Well look no further. Here are a few ideas to get you going and I hope you’ll contribute some of your own too: Diary Style Blogging Asking students to write about what they did at the weekend or a favourite memory from the last school holidays can be a great stimulus for individual writing. Fictional Diary Style Blogging Once pupils are comfortable with writing diary entries about their own experiences, why not mix things up a little bit by asking them to write a diary entry from the point of view of e.g a famous historical character you’ve been learning about, or a character from a book? Collaborative Story Telling

IntenseDebate comments enhance and encourage conversation on your blog or website The Why and How of Using Facebook For Educators – No Need to be Friends At All! If you are one of those out there that believe that Facebook has no place in the classroom, then, well maybe this post isn’t for you. But please first take a look at just a few reasons why you should reconsider: The fact is, the majority of your students and their parents are probably already on FacebookEven when schools have a policy against being “friends” online, there are tools you can use that won’t violate policyDespite what you may hear, there are strong privacy options that you can set up so only those that you want can access your informationWe have an obligation as educators to model appropriate online behavior and learn right along our students From Where do we begin? Just today, Facebook released their own sponsored Facebook For Educators guide, but we found that there really wasn’t enough “how-to” in this guide to make it worth it. FacebookForEducators.org Should we be “friends” with students? 1. 2. 3. 4.

10 reasons to get educators blogging 5 reasons educators should start reading blogs: 1) - Blogs are the heart of learning and sharing... If you are an idea and inspiration junkie like myself, then you will find blogs to be extremely beneficial. Educators of all ages and backgrounds are bringing their ideas, reflections and experiences to one convenient location; their blog. Educational bloggers have one goal, and that is to share as many ideas and experiences as possible. During the last 7 months, I have had the opportunity to learn so much by reading and following the blogs of others. 2) - Blogs are real world and real time experiences... When educators write a new blog post I can say with almost 100% certainty that they are writing about something that has happened recently. 3) - Blogs will make you reflect on your educational practices... As you begin reading educator blogs you will instinctively start to reflect upon your educational practices and beliefs. 5) - Blogs are free, accessible and extremely convenient...

prezi In my last blog post, I tried to explain what Prezi actually is and how it should be (or shouldn't be) compared to PowerPoint. In this post, I will try to explain some of the basics of using Prezi. Signing up: The sign-up process is pretty easy. All you have to do is to decide which license you need. After you have received your confirmation e-mail, you can log on to the site and start creating your own Prezis. First steps: After clicking the "New Prezi" button you will be asked to give a title for your presentation. The Editing "Canvas": Now you are at the editing area of your Prezi. After this point, you will start creating your presentation. Click here to continue reading Part 3

20+ Essential Tools and Applications For Bloggers Blogging can be quite a process. First you may have to do some research, then put your thoughts together, and of course add any necessary screenshots and images. Let’s not forget the optimization part (SEO, keywords, etc) and sharing your content on the Web so that others will read it and hopefully share it. With all of these steps involved, blogging can be quite time-consuming and many bloggers get burnt out rather quickly doing these things on a daily basis. Lucky for us, the process doesn’t have to be so difficult anymore. Save Ideas for Later Tools that let you save items for later use are great time savers because you can save Web pages, images and files as you’re reading or browsing. Read-it-Later With this tool you can save Web pages to your Read-it-Later list to be read at a later time. A similar tool is Instapaper, which works in the same way, but doesn’t have as many applications. Evernote You can capture anything from Web pages to images, text, and voice notes with Evernote.

CristinaSkyBox edte.ch My Reflection on #28daysofwriting February 28, 2015 – 4:23 pm It was in about early January when I began to mull over the idea of getting back into a writing habit. I wanted to renew the discussion and connectedness I enjoyed through my blog and get myself writing regularly again. What Makes People Creative? February 27, 2015 – 9:10 pm When you start to explore the literature around the definition of creativity, or what it means to be creative, the lists and references go on and on. Convene your Classroom Creative Council February 26, 2015 – 9:28 pm During some research on Thomas Edison I stumbled on the fact that he deliberately surrounded himself with a diverse range of expertise in order to generate new thinking and ideas, a creative council. Education Suffers from a Lack of Knowledge Urgency February 25, 2015 – 10:26 pm My EDtalk Interview from ULearn14 February 24, 2015 – 8:27 pm

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