Our Group

Welcome Teachers of English at Technical Schools

Welcome to our group blog for English Language Teaching in Bahrain! This blog is meant to be an example to illustrate possible applications such a Web log could have for use by your classes or by your fellow teachers. It is also meant to support and follow up our own discussions as we meet during the Spring semester 2007.

Journal Question

Get students to practice their writing online by prompting them with journal questions to respond to. Students can personalize their answers, comments to each others', and add photos to make the process more enjoyable.

A useful source for questions is http://iteslj.org/questions/.

Post a comment to the following question.

Should a city try to preserve its old, historic buildings or destroy them and replace them with modern buildings? Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.

Welcome to the World of Blogging

Let's see how a blog is defined at Wikipedia.

Now see one simple example of how a Moroccan student used his blog to post messages for an extracurricular club, the Student Leadership Club.

An important part of blogging is the ability to post comments, making these Web sites interactive. Post a comment to this blog to practice this by clicking on the "0 Comments" below. (Unless you are logged in, you will need to sign your comment in the body of your message. If you click "anonymous" the space to sign in will disappear.)

Here's an excellent blog where a university instructor at Arkansas Tech posts assignments and resources for his students - ELI Student Network. (Hint: Try the listening practice at the TOEFL Podcast link under TOEFL Practice at the right.)

There are also of course blogs that teachers post for other teachers. Look at these examples: Writing Topics & Tech AUC 07. (Hint: The last one is mine ;)

Welcome to the world of blogging!

To start a new account at Blogger, you first need a "Gmail" email account (G is for Google). If you don't already have one, start a new Gmail account and make sure to remember your login and password.

Go to Blogger and sign in as a "New Blogger." Be prepared to decide:

-the title of your blog
-the URL (Web address) of your blog

You need to make a first post before you can see your blog online.

After your blog is created and you send a short welcome message, you might want to change the Settings:

-Format - Time Zone
-Comments - Who can comment? (Anyone)

Practice posting messages and pictures on your blog and commenting on someone else's blog.

(To save a picture from the Internet: Right click on the picture you want, select "save as" and decide where to save it. You need to locate it later when you are ready to upload it to your blog.)

You can have more than one blog with the same account. The "dashboard" let's you choose which blog to work with in the same Gmail account.

After you have created your new blog, be sure to add a comment to this blog while you are logged in so that others can read what you post!