WEEK 1: Turning a blog into a language learning tool.

      I am a heavy user of Blogger. This is the platform where I set up my  personal blog two years ago. I created it and I still manage it today because at a given moment in my life, I felt the impulse to express my personal thoughts about Ivorian talented people who are scarcely mentioned in media. Therefore, my blogging was limited to expressing personal thoughts throughout these two years. I have never realized that blogs could be used as language learning tools. That is why I was very surprised when Sean, the instructor of this course warned us that each participant would have to create a blog.

      I set to work as soon as the instructions for creating a reflective  blog for this course have been published. I have not had much problem because I decided to keep my blog as simple as possible in order not to confuse students or colleagues who would like to refer to it. I just made the sharing modules below each post more conspicuous to allow those who are more familiar with social networks to share posts and contents more easily. I also provided a list of the main links of this course in the right side bar because I am still a little confused about all these different platforms. So, keeping them handy spares me the boring task of going everytime to my email to look for the appropriate links . Finally, I added a list of  blogs run by my peer teachers following this course. This allows me to see what the latter are pushing in real time without passing by the blog roll on the class wiki. Thus, it is easier for me  to react to their posts and interact with them , which is vividly recommended by the instructor.

       Althoug the creation process went on smoothly, my major concern was about how to turn my brand new blog (lool!) into a teaching tool. That is where this link provided by Sean came in handy. Reading it and visiting the blogs it gives as examples gave me some insights into how blogs could be used for class purposes. The samples of reflective blogs on the website of the course also gave me some ideas on how to make the most of my blog for class purpose. To match the action to the act, I started by leading some investigations among my students. I asked them:

      - if they had ever heard of blogs,

      -if they owned blogs,

      -If they knew how to build a blog,

      -if they were interested into using blogs for their courses.

My administrative assistant students.

      I found out that most of them have never heard of  blogs and none of them owns a blog. Most of them are interested in creating their own blogs, but are not skilled enough for that. The main lesson I eventually drew from this enquiry is that in my situation the most appropriate solution would be a teacher’s blog, that is, a blog where I am going to give students instructions concerning my courses , where I am going to leave assignments and homeworks, where I am going to give links to online resources to allow students to go further with courses. 
      The outcome of my reflections is the blog you are reading now.