Games to play in your forum or blog

This is another ELTAS Tech Tools Day task.

Pre-task thinking:

• What kinds of games do you play with adult classes?
• Which games make them actually apply their language skills?

There are lots of low-tech, easy to set up games you can play using your blog/ comments or your forum.

Text-based games

Any kind of collaborative or prompted writing can be a game as soon as you set rules limiting what students can do, getting their creative juices flowing. They are developing something together, yet watching the others, which all by itself introduced a competitive element. You can set time constraints to raise adrenaline levels and create parallel tasks to increase the sense of competition.

1. Write a story simply by extending a sentence by a word. Rule: you're not allowed to delete what someone else has written! Here's a sample: Expanding Alice. Each person updating the story copies and pastes the last update into the comments and adds words.
2. Change a story by changing individual words (sample: Altering Alice).
   

This posting must happen assynchronously - students may get in each other's way if they work all at once! In Ning students can update their comments for 15 minutes, so they can correct any mixups. BUT you can turn this into a synchronous game by having everyone start their own story as a separate discussion and then having them go around adding to the others'.

You might want to link to Oxford collocations in your Ning or blog and have students refer to them when playing text-based games to keep the language juices flowing.

Picture-based games

Post a puzzling picture as a discussion and have everyone guess what it is. I really like the picture puzzles on Pixelio.de. Register and then just type in "Bildrätsel" into the search box there for free downloadable pictures. The photographers generally include a picture "solution" that you can share when comments start to run dry. Pairs include these:

Interactive games for adults: Fun, but not collaborative!

You can create your own games, and the range is virtually endless. But where is the line between a game and an exercise? Many ready games are Flash-based, which has to be installed on the computers you are using. You'll find interactive language games at Spotlight, designed by Macmillan.

Hat tip to Markus Brendel of Der Englisch Blog: Markus embeds in his blog is Sheepman, a German-English idiom translation game that has sheep biting the dust. The activities on Nik (Peachey)'s Daily English Activities feel like games. It's a big world of games out there (let's talk about it another day).

BUT all of these games can also be played alone. You can beam them up on a whiteboard, or use a projector and have someone type what everyone says.

But in a forum, you're playing together. Collaborating. Even if you're not in the same room.

Task:

• Think of a forum game to play with a class of yours.
• Write the introductory text.
• Post as a Ning discussion.
• Invite others to join.

Add a comment to someone's blog

The ELTAS Tech Tools Day includes a workshop for online newbies introducing the basics of online communication. Those first steps can be daunting, and plenty of great teachers are a bit afraid of taking them. Here are a few

Pre-task questions:

Q: Why should I comment on a blogpost? I can send that person an email if I know them and really want to say something. And if I don't know them, isn't commenting just showing off?
A: This is a question of the changing culture in our profession. I look forward to a lively discussion with you!

Q: If I post a comment to a blogpost I have read online, the page looks different and the interface asks me to identify myself in some way, sometimes type in some letters from a visual code (a captcha, right?) or even add my email address. Won't I get lots of spam if I type in my email address?
A: No. Your email address is only published to the blogger and is visible only in the blogger's backend, the admin area. Seeing your email address tells the blogger that your entry is not spam to his or her blog. Since spam is a fact of life, though, you should activate spam filters on your email account(s) anyway.

Q: I wrote a comment, but it didn't show up when I looked at the blog. Why?
A: The first time you comment on a blog, it is put on hold. The blogger has to allow comments by you first. Patience is sometimes needed, as some bloggers do have a life, I've been told.

Q: I want to add a link to my comment. How do I do it?
A: Just copy and paste the link into the interface (include the http:// at the beginning!). Will it show up as a hyperlink?

1. Only if the comments function has a built-in converter from Rich Text (the formatted text) to HTML (the code that runs the websites). Some blogs do, some don't.
   
2. If your link doesn't show up as a hyperlink after you post it, don't worry. Next time, try adding the necessary HTML code to create a hyperlink. Here's a simple HTML table, and your HTML code for hyperlinks is at the bottom on the left:

Q: Can you just run through the whole process?
A: Yep. Here's a video.

Video made with Jing, a great screen capture tool.

Task:
Add a comment to a blog.... for instance, to this post!
Take the challenge and add a hyperlink to your comment!
For example, can you share a site you like to go to for teaching ideas?

Blog carnivals to motivate you to share your ideas

There are several options if you want to write a blogpost to join the online community, without committing to writing a whole blog.

1. First of all, there is an EFL blog carnival every two months. Larry Ferlazzo invites submissions and hosts. Anything related to the teaching of English as a second language, including student work, is welcome. Your writing is first published in a blog of your choice, and then the link is entered in the carnival.

What to do if you don't have a blog?

• Open one using Posterous.com.The easiest solution around! Perfect if you want to post only occasionally!
  
• Write in our group blog Ask Auntie Web, a blog with a techie focus.
• Contribute a guest post to the most excellent http://www.teachingvillage.org/ run by Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto, which currently contains a lovely article by Emma Herrod on using LEGO rods (the way you may have seen Cuisinaire rods used). Directions on how to become a guest blogger are here.

June 1st hosted by Mary Ann Zehr, Learning the Language

August 1st will be at David Deubelbeiss’ EFL Classroom 2.0

October 1st will be at Ms. Flecha’s My Life Untranslated: Adventures of a New ESL Teacher in New York City.

You can contribute a post to any of these by using an easy submission form.
If the form does not work, you can send the link to Larry Ferlazzo using his Contact Form.

You can see all the previous fourteen editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here:

Share your lesson idea

• Do you have a lesson plan, a warmer, a game, a controlled practice unit that has worked for you?
• Would you like to be part of a community of teachers who share lesson ideas?
• Would you enjoy having your idea published for all of the interested teaching community to see?

Then join the upcoming 15th EFL blog carnival, the Carnival of English Language Lessons, hosted by Karenne Sylvester.
Here's how:

1. Write up your lesson plan.
2. If you have a blog, publish it there.
3. If you don't have one, publish it on Ask Auntie Web. Contact us at info (at) melta (dot) de. We'd love to publish it for you.

Then register your published post (or we'll register it for you) on the blog carneval site using Karenne's form here.

Deadline: March 21.
Publication: April 1.

With this focus, the 15th blog carnival is sure to be a winner. Come on, everybody, join in!

See the EFL Carnival Archive

What is a blog carnival?
A blog carnival is a tool used by bloggers to promote their work. In a classic blog carnival, one site is designated as the host or organizer, and participants send in permanent links, or "permalinks", to posts on the theme of the carnival. The organizer collects the links in a single post, which becomes the starting point to all of the participating blogs. Good for readers, because it gives them access to a wide variety of blogs; Good for bloggers, who appreciate the publicity. (Summary of this definition)

The 30 Goals Challenge

If you missed Shelly Terrell's "The 30 Goals Challenge" in January, she has made the 30 posts into an e-book. She blogged about a professional development challenge with an essential personal element, each connected to an aspect of paedagogy, online marketing or social networking, every single day for a month. Reflective and integrative. If you're thinking about where you're going as a trainer/ English teacher, and are looking for focus, you will certainly find inpiration here.

1. Keep a Diary
2. Contribute to a Blog Carnival
3. Start an Adventure
4. Support a New Blogger
5. Update Your Online Profiles
6. Set a Google Alert
7. Step Out of Your Comfort Zone
8. What’s Your Personal Theme Song?
9. Be a Guest Blogger
10. Make A Connection
11. Ask, Perhaps You’ll Receive
12. Reach Out
13. Give Students Reign
14. Cause a Ripple
15. Create: 40 Writing, Music, & Art Resources
16. Voice Your Appreciation
17. Tell Your Story
18. Let’s Move
19. What Do You Believe?
20. Seek Feedback
21. Have a Bit of Fun
22. 12 Resources for Giving Constructive Feedback
23. Where There’s a Will
24. Conquer a Fear
25. Plant a Seed
26. What Are You Putting Off?
27. Reflection vs. Reaction
28. Capture the Moment
29. Stay Focused
30. Pass the Baton

Calling all collaborators

Hello MELTA members,

Ask Auntie Web is our blog, the online sister to the column in our MELTA Newsletter. Like the print column, the blog is looking for collaborators, and seeking to revive old ones (you know who you are!). Would you like to contribute a blog post? It could contain tips, ideas, reflections, food for thought in the following areas:

• online resources and tools to help build your teaching repertoire
• your experience and questions re the teaching you have done using these resources and tools
• upcoming teacher training in these areas, or reflections on training you've had
• social networking to build professional connections with other professionals
• gadget talk and computer tips that help you simplify or spruce up your life
• the specific experience of trying to make it as a teacher in Germany in 2010
• lamentos, rants, musings, exultations in general, just to have had the fun experience of posting something online for your colleagues to read
  

Please get in touch with me, Anne c/o info (at) melta (dot) de
or more directly on Twitter: http://twitter.com/annehodg

Getting your students involved in the Read/Write Web

At MELTA we have a workshop coming up on 27 February 2010 with Karenne Sylvester, who has been teaching blended learning courses using Ning, a social networking cum online course creation tool. She's started an online series on how to learn English on her blog. Her first post is on how she gets her students reading blogs, and includes the blogs she recommends to her students, and they include my favorites and introduced me to some new ones, especially Dominic Cole's, a blogger who keeps up not one but three very interesting blogs. Really cool. This is Karenne's list:

1. Dominic Cole's: http://alittlebutoften.blogspot.com/
2. Toby Crawley's: http://bite-sized-english.com/
3. Markus Brendell: http://www.der-englisch-blog.de/
4. Neal Chambers': http://www.englishspark.com/en/blogs
5. Berni Wall's: http://www.gapfillers.co.uk/
6. Nik Peachey's : http://daily-english-activities.blogspot.com/
7. Jeffrey Hill's: http://jeffreyhill.typepad.com/english/
8. Clare Whitmell's: http://www.theenglishweb.com/
9. Chiew P Nang's: http://acliltoclimb.blogspot.com/
10. Sue Lyon Jones': http://esolcourses.blogspot.com/
11. Anne Hodgson's (yeah! thanks!): http://annehodgson.de/

I'd add Dominic Cole's main blog: http://www.dcielts.com/archive/
Karenne will be starting up her own blog for learners again, too.

And what about the Business Spotlight and Spotlight crowd, who write real blogs, and nice ones, too, but for a magazine? For some reason the blogging world hasn't accepted them as one of their own. I'm not sure why that is. Is it unacceptable to recommend a magazine blog? Or is it that they're not engaging on Twitter, or commenting on other people's blogs? I figure that might be a faux pas in the blogging community. Yet the blogs are clearly directed at a language learner, and are explicitly educational. I don't think that's a bad thing.

1. Debbie Capras's: http://www.business-spotlight.de/blogs/deborah-capras/
   
2. Ian McMaster's: http://www.business-spotlight.de/blogs/ian-mcmaster/
   
3. Eamonn Fitzgerald's: http://www.spotlight-online.de/blogs/eamonn-fitzgerald/
   
4. Dagmar Taylor's: http://www.spotlight-online.de/blogs/dagmar-taylor
   
5. Mike Pilewski's: http://www.spotlight-online.de/blogs/mike-pilewski
   

Richard Wiseman

Shelly posted Richard Wiseman's "Top 10 quirky science tricks for parties" on her blog:



...which led me to Richard Wiseman's lovely blog itself, with his "Friday puzzles", a nice resource if you're teaching people with an interest in science!

Edublog Awards, the polls are open

Vote for the blogs of your choice from the shortlists here: http://edublogawards.com.
A great way to see where the education community stands at the moment.
A few distinct communities seem to be evolving, and it's exciting to try and find your feet in them. More hands-on techy? More critical theory of technology and society? More inspirational/ personal mental guru? More paedagogical-analytical? More community-building and sharing? As they say, it's all good. And I'm still stumbling through. Do you notice yourself being drawn more and more to any one community of blogs?

How to blog? Why Blog at all?

In August Karenne Sylvester published what is called a "Blog Carneval", which is a collection of blog posts by many different people, answering her question, "What advice would you give to another TEFL teacher interested in becoming a blogger?" The results at http://kalinago.blogspot.com/2009/08/blogging-english-language-teachers-tech.html are organized under these headings:

• On getting started
• On blogging with students
• On finding inspiration & writing great content
• On the effect it can have on your career
• On stuff to know about
• On audience
• On community
• On commenting
• Why I blog

The list of bloggers she was able to round up is really impressive, and Ask Auntie Web got in, too. Thanks, Karenne! But go and see for yourself.

English Language Teaching Blogging

View more documents from Karenne Sylvester.

Top language teaching blogs to follow

Bab.la has just published a top 100 blog list, and the top 10 blogs to read if you are teaching a language are:

Overall Top 100 | Language Learning | Language Technology | Language Professionals

1. Listen to English
Podcast and blog for learners of English. Topics include current events, items of interest and cultural quirks.
2. Inglês Online
Tips, experiences and websites for people learning or teaching English.
3. Grammar Girl
Blog with quick and dirty tips for better writing.
4. Angela Maiers
Putting Learners and Learning First
5. todo ele 2.0
Spanish as a second language, resources, lessons
6. Better at English
Real English for real people
7. English Spark
Putting a spark in the English learning community with tools to learn, share, collaborate and connect.
8. Confessions of a Comunity College Dean
Education and teaching blog
9. Kalinago English
Teaching EFL Teachers How To Teach Speaking
10. Tecla SAP
Blog created to help English learners with their studies focused on common difficulties that Portuguese speakers have when learning English.

Congratulations to one and all. I like competitions like this, because it's lovely to see bloggers you follow get the appreciation they deserve, and exciting to discover new ones. Spanish, anyone?

See Lexophiles, the blog project run by Andreas Schroeter, Thomas Schroeter, and Patrick Uecker, the managing directors of Bab.la, the language learning networking site based in Hamburg that ran the competition.

A networking natural: Karenne Sylvester

I first heard of Karenne Sylvester through my colleagues on the Board at MELTA, coming back from an InterELTA meeting. "She's really active and savvy", they said, "and she could write a blog for all of us ELTAs." Unfortunately, setting up anything like that is a major challenge in many ways, and we really wanted to do something downhome and local first. But at least the discussion introduced us properly to her blog.

And what a blog it is. Frankly, she is already doing far more than providing a blog to an institution. She is an institution.

Based in the Stuttgart area, she divides her attentions between teaching on the one hand, and mentoring and training other trainers on the other, which she has built into being a one-woman networking hub. She's also the originator of the 27 hour day, as you can tell from her two blog setup, her network of EFL bloggers on the social networking site Ning, her activities across the blogosphere and world of Twitter, and her covert allusions to deadlines and projects.

She's on top of things and has everyone's attention thanks to her very punchy sense of humor, and what she calls her "rants". A refreshing brand of tough love. No tired old stuff here.

Friends, you can do no better than to join her network.

On Twitter: http://twitter.com/kalinagoenglish
For teachers: http://kalinago.blogspot.com
Her other activities and products: "About"
Her social network for ELT bloggers BELTfree explained here.

For ESP teachers

Here's a link to blog written by an EFL/ESP teacher called Jeremy Day aimed at those of us who teach ESP (English for Special/Specific Purposes)

Specific English

It's a relatively new blog, but it already has some brilliant tips and links on it and I wouldn't be surprised to see it being 'followed' by many an ESP teacher in the not too distant future.

Organizing your reading list

I follow a lot of blogs written by EFL teachers, people in the media and political movers and shakers I find interesting. The easiest way to organize this reading list is Google Reader (http://www.google.de/reader). It lists the blogs in alphabetical order, shows you which posts have been updated since you last looked and allows you to read the posts in the reader window without actually surfing over to the site, then marking it as read. You can also scroll all the way through the Google Reader listing chronologically in a matter of seconds to find an old entry. I find it a very neat and quick solution. I used to subscribe to blog feeds through my web browser, but it slowed my browser down significantly every time the browser went off to look for feed updates. Using Google Reader keeps the updating process separate from your other online activities.



Take the Google Reader tour in English here.

Getting it up (1) – simple ways to start a web presence

We assume you need some sort of internet presence – to impress potential clients, to put on your business card, and so you and your students can communicate with each other. But you don't know how to build a website, and haven't time to learn. You want something you can have up and running in a few hours.

Your options are: blog, bulletin board (or forum) and a template-based website.

Blogs:
Originally just a way for people to write an online diary, blogs are now often used as substitutes for normal websites. This is because it's easy to add or change the contents: you don't need to buy or install any software. You use your web browser, and it's no more complicated (well, only slightly more complicated) than writing an e-mail.

To get a blog, there are two main sources: Blogger aka Blogspot, and Wordpress. Both of them offer free hosted services. ("Hosted" = the database containing the blog is on their servers. For a non-hosted blog, you have to have a web server, or rent space on somebody's server, and install the blog software on it. You probably don't want to do this: it only really makes sense if you want the blog to be part of an existing website.)

Blogger/Blogspot is part of the Google empire. For the hosted part, go to www.blogspot.com/ and set up your site. For instructions, try this video tutorial: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryb4VPSmKuo.

If you don't want to live your entire online life as a citizen of one Google satrapy or another, try www.wordpress.com/. Wordpress has a more community, less big-businessy feel than Blogger. For a video tutorial (long, but very clear and helpful), see www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWYi4_COZMU. YouTube is, of course, also a subsidiary of Google.

Why a blog might not be a good idea:
Blogs make the most sense for publishing your latest comment. If you want a site that gives, say, a potential client a quick idea of who you are and what you can do, a blog won't work so well. Anything you wrote in the past will get lost in the links and archives in the sidebar: it's hard to get people to click there. And if you want to interact with your students, it's hard to organize a discussion into a coherent sequence on a blog: bulletin boards work much better for this. And there's an extra step (and some expense) involved if you want a nice personal url (e.g. your very own dot com address).

Here's a successful attempt to make a full website using blog software: www.badscience.net/, using WordPress. The blog format is suitable because the site is a succession of reports.
And here's an example (posted on the www.tefl-germany.de forum) where the attempt to use blog software to make a site didn't work: kid-learn-english.blogspot.com/.

Bulletin boards (forums):
Much better than a blog for running joined-up discussions on particular themes, so the best choice if your main idea is to interact with your students. Apart from anything else, a visitor to your forum can start a topic, which is not possible in a blog. But a forum is not as good as a conventional site for presenting yourself as a business to prospective clients.

If you go for a forum, you'd better be sure that enough people will contribute. The lists of topics ("threads") in forums usually include counts of the number of people who have viewed and replied to each topic. Too many zeros here can be deeply embarrassing. (The trick is to contribute yourself under lots of different names, at least at the start: if you find that you're still doing this after a couple of years, you'd have been better off with a blog, or perhaps a household pet to talk to.)

As with blogs, forums can be hosted by a provider or can run on your own server. Unless you're a business with an IT department that knows about databases, you want a hosted service. Typically, they are free if you don't mind the provider putting ads on your page. Otherwise, you can pay them a bit (maybe $5 a month) to keep the ads off.

The www.tefl-germany.de/ forum uses the provider Yuku: www.yuku.com/. It's worked well for us since 2001. ("Well" here meaning: the site is hardly ever unavailable, and the posts don't get lost in the cyberwilderness.)

Websites:
I mean, a conventional small-business website: a homepage to say who you are and why you're good. Another page or two with references, a c.v., something about the methods and the courses you offer. A page with some clever tips for your students, or links to other sites if you can't think of any clever tips. And your contact details.

Much better than a blog or forum if you don't desperately want input from your visitors. And after all, it's bad enough having to interact with language learners while you're getting paid for your time. The problem is: it's more complicated to set up a website than either of the other two options (which is why a lot of people go for blogs and forums).

What you need is:

• a server
• a url (www...............com or .de or .co. uk etc.)
• your content, formatted as html
• some software to upload your content to the server.

Fortunately, there are hosted services that meet (or get round) all four needs, cheaply or for free. They provide server space, let you register a www name, and provide a selection of page design templates for your content. You access these templates through a web browser, which removes the need for special uploading software.

The first place to look for such a service is probably your internet service provider. T-Online, for instance, at homepage.t-online.de, offers a free service to existing customers, with a "Design Assistent" to create your pages (up to three), one .de domain, a blog function, etc. For € 4.99 you can have a lot more pages, and more stuff to put on them. Otherwise, the biggest (and, it seems, most reliable) provider in Germany is www.1und1.de, which offers similar packages from € 3.99 up.

Incidentally, when Germans say "Homepage", they usually mean "website", not "home page". When they say "Website" (pronounced "vepzide") they usually mean "web page", because of a confusion with "Seite". This can cause endless amusement when you're teaching English to web developers.

So there's no excuse for not getting an online presence immediately(ish). To make anything posher and more creative, you'll really have to learn a bit about how html works. Nothing about html is intellectually demanding: there are no obscure concepts. But it's rather like the offside law in football, or the use of the present perfect continuous: there are a lot of exceptions and fiddly details. In my next post: the easiest way to learn all about html.

Thoughts about blogging

Before you ask your students to write online in English as part of an assignment or project, you might want to get some experience yourself. Here are some very general thoughts about blogging that you might find helpful:

1. Read what other bloggers are writing in your field of teaching, in the business fields you provide training to and in fields you're interested in, it will improve your own style and content. Have a look the the Auntie Web blog list - and recommend blogs to us!
   
2. Define your goals: A blog is a product. Who are you writing for and what is your purpose? Your goals can change, but then you must adapt your blog accordingly, or start a new one. As your projects and contracts change, so may your blog.
3. Network with bloggers and become part of an online community.
4. Post links to other sites on your blog; visit and write comments on other people's blogs, interested readers will be able to find your blog by following your link back.
   
5. Market your blog using online listings (e.g technorati.com), social networking sites (e.g. www.xing.com, local sites like www.melta.de) and twitter.com.
6. The trend is: blogs down, microblogging up. KISS.
7. Make your blog beautiful.
8. Serve a niche: Focus wins.
9. Post regularly so your readers know what to expect.
10. Unique content: A blog is subjective and personal.
    
11. Be yourself. Be friendly.
    
12. Mistakes make you human. You and others learn from your mistakes.
    
13. Every email and comment you get on your blog is enormously valuable. Build a readership by responding to your readers.
14. Mistakes by EFL students in their comments on your blog should not be corrected. Public correction in writing is very harsh. You can edit comments discretely and email the student, if you feel that is necessary.
    
15. Don't expect a lot of action on your blog. It's nice if people drop by to see what you're up to and what you have to say, but it's just one part of your overall communications.
    

Here is a very short reading list for using blogs in EFL:
Aaron Patric Campbell
Graham Stanley
Andrew Johnson
Very warmly recommended:
Mark Appleby

Setting up a blog

You're reading one, but what exactly is a "blog"? Lee Lefever explains things nicely in his "The Common Craft Show". Watch:



So what can a blog be for a teacher? A few purposes that come to mind are:

1. A professional journal you write, aimed at colleagues
2. A service blog for your community (like Ask Auntie Web)
3. A teacher's course log you write for your students, posting materials and homework
   
4. A collaborative work space for your students to post their own projects
5. Individual students blogging and communicating using their own favored communication channels, and linking you into their network (Facebook, StudiVZ, twitter...)
   
6. Part of a blended learning course, i.e. your own content linked to exercises and media you set up, along with workspaces for your students
   
7. The news section of your website, with changing content that keeps clients and students coming back.

Basic blogs
The Ask Auntie Web blog was set up for free by going to www.blogger.com. This is a service provided by Google, and it has proved to be very stable. Some of the best writers in EFL use this provider - for example David Crystal, for his DCBlog: http://david-crystal.blogspot.com. We could also have gone to www.wordpress.com for an equally good free provider. This is the provider Lindsey Clandfield uses on Six Things: http://sixthings.net.
A wide variety of templates let you personalize the look of your blog's layout, colors and fonts.
Here is a short tutorial on how to create a blog with Blogger:




The helplink given in the tutorial is http://help.blogger.com. Also feel free to Ask Auntie Web. If you have a question, there are probably dozens of others asking themselves the same thing. Be sure to make a note of the address of your blog and Google account e-mail address and password.

More advanced blogs
You can actually build a website with blog software, including static pages for contact forms and your imprint and so on (i.e. point 7. above). You can do this with WordPress (www.wordpress.org - not www.wordpress.com!) Pete Sharma uses this solution for his Technology for Business English (te4be) blog: http://www.te4be.com/pages/newblog. WordPress.org provides free opensource software, which means that noone is earning money on the programs, which are maintained by a professional community.

Blogspot and WordPress.com automatically provide you with everything a website needs, namely a host server (a computer that can be accessed by anyone on the internet) and a domain (a website address). If you set up with WordPress.org, however, you need to register those things yourself. That involves costs (ca. 10 euros for the domain and a monthly fee of ca. 10 euros for the host) but it gets you a professional website. I've found a very nice video tutorial on how to set one up at www.becomeablogger.com. One of the advantages of using WordPress for your website is that you can make changes to the static pages at any time all by yourself. In short, you don't need to have someone "hardcode", or program once and for all, a website for you anymore. If you ask a professional to set up a website for you, I can only recommend WordPress.

If you decide to start with a basic blog and later want to move on to the more advanced solution, it's no problem to import your old blog posts from Blogspot or WordPress.com into a WordPress.org blog.

A woman's way into technology

It sometimes irks me when women defer to men in matters of technology, because it hits a nerve. For years my husband ran things on my computer. I'm a freelancer working mostly from my home office, and he was all the sys admin I could afford. That put a bit of a strain on our relationship when I couldn't make a deadline because of a technical glitch, but he was tired and had been solving other problems all day. So at some point I simply decided I needed to be able to fix things myself.

I got into teaching distance courses using platforms that other people had set up. Then I took a Moodle course which opened up what things look like in the backend, where the bits and bytes John was talking about live. After that I really wanted to get cracking, so I got professional help setting up my own blog and Moodle platform, learned to work things in the privacy of the internet, and started thinking about what the user really gets out of the online experience. The last really exciting step was to help migrate e-learning magazine content from one system to another.

There is this "wow" factor associated with technology, but like magic tricks, applications can be learned. All you need is a patient mentor or two (!) and the determination and the spirit of wanting to get to the bottom of things. If I can't do it myself, someone on the internet can probably help. And mistakes are there to be fixed. Being a late-bloomer, I feel that if I can do it, anyone (and any woman) can. There's a very nice video interview with Nicky Hockly, director of pedagogy at the Consultancy-E which she co-directs with Gavin Dudeney, where she mentions something quite similar.

The real challenge, truly deserving of the "wow", is the content you put into a tool and how you use it. Nothing beats trying it out. A proven good way into technology, and the one Nicky Hockly says she found most effective, is a blog. So next up you'll find tips here on how to set up your own blog, and what you can use it for. Stay tuned.

What is "Ask Auntie Web"?

At MELTA, the Munich English Language Teachers’ Association, there are many teachers who are quite frustrated with new media technology. There it is, you can see it, you can smell it, you can taste it, but you just can’t quite get your hands on it. There are techie blogs out there, sure, Nik Peachey (http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com) is one of the best, but they’re “so high-igh-igh above me”, and it makes a teacher feel awfully old, doesn’t it, to have to trawl through the language and only understand maybe half of it. Well, it's a shame when good teachers with deep knowledge feel like idiots. That is one of the things that we really need to change. Lucy Mellersh built this blog for MELTA about a year ago to go with the tech advice column, Ask Auntie Web, in the MELTA Newsletter. But then MELTA kept it under wraps because we wanted to promote the MELTA Forum (http://www.melta.de/meltaboard/index.php). That forum is a communication platform for MELTA members. Yet we're a big community of teachers out here on the web, with great big questions and a great big pool of knowledge. So here goes a relaunch:

Let’s build Ask Auntie Web into the blog it could be. Let's make it a place to share knowledge. As you know, the most productive part of learning is asking the right questions. What have you always wanted to be able to do in teaching? What applications would you need to make your classes simply brilliant? What tech tricks have you seen somewhere that you'd really like to be able do yourself? Ask Auntie Web, and we can start a discussion.


Photo: George Sled, Panoramio

How it works: You can post comments under each blogpost. Or you can become an author on this blog, and join the writing team. Just send an email to "info (at) melta (dot) de" (this strange spelling is to avoid spam, so translate it to a normal email address). You can also follow the Auntie Web conversation on twitter. You haven't discovered twitter yet? Then read the first blogpost, below.