Welcome to your En 9 blog. It will be used for various literary responses and conversations around texts we are reading, viewing & discussing in class, starting with the novel Cue For Treason. This blog is intended for invited guests only (students, parents, others invited by Ms Lees) and for educational purposes. Since your contributions to the blog and in class discussions will become part of your grade, remember to use more formal English - meaning full sentences and no chat lingo.
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Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Monday, November 28, 2011
Extra flex this week
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Concept map rubric
Additional Opinion
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Should we continue blogging?
Yes we should. Why? Because it is a great learning experience and also because of these reasons.
¤ comments from other group members really helped me correct weak areas.
¤other group members can set an example for you to use as a guideline for your own post.
¤Ms Lees usually takes about a week or more to mark our work handed in or it somehow gets lost. Blogger can prevent that from happening.
¤Blogger will help one to problem solve. For example, if there are tech issues, you can just post it as a comment or just do a hard paper copy of it.
Should we countinue blogging?
Although this seems to be easy, if one of the members does not post on time the other members can't fully finish their homework, which brings us back to work habits. If we are going to continue using blogger to do projects, homework posts in group I think we should be encouraging our group members to post on time. This will benefit the group members and herself/himself too, it will change his/her work habits and more likely start posting on time, and the group members would be able to finish their task of commenting on his/her work.
Further more as my group member said, we could do some hand in homework too, not everything has to be about blogging all our homework. In conclusion for our blog, it's a yes to continue blogging, but our members should be posting on time.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Shall We Continue to Blog?
Indeed, we all started out kind of testing the water little by little; and eventually we were able to grasp the technicalities of using an online blog and advance. Here comes the question though: should we continue to use Blogger? I have mixed feels with regards to it. Blogger has thrown a few obstacles out at us here and there, technical problems in general, but I believe that the biggest problem here is the work habits section. Perhaps students think that by using the Internet for homework can opt them out of finishing it before the deadline, or maybe even to the extent to have an excuse to not do their homework. Furthermore, I also believe that the quality of the comments should be reinforced to contain more aspects of useful constructive criticism. I feel that this is more crucial to blogging because it involves the success of our classmates; if I don't finish my homework, then my blog members will not be able to complete theirs.
Another aspect of this question is whether or not blogging is a more effective approach than carrying out in-class homework. I would think: not quite.; using blogger has given people more excuses to not finish their homework on time. Frankly, my opinion is that my writing or reading would have improve much more if I were doing it by hand with the help of actual classmates in the form of solid. This, however, can be put aside because it is inevitable that we will have to use technology greatly in the future. Doing homework in class and handing it in class gives people more of an obligation to finish their homework, that much I believe is true.
My final opinion on this matter is that: yes, we should continue using blogger; however only to a certain extent and only if 2 conditions are met. We should only use Blogger moderately and mixed in with actual in class homework. The 2 conditions I believe are: students MUST finish their homework on time, and be obligated to accomplish quality work (and comments to the best of their potential). If these two conditions are met, I believe that this is a practical approach to learning and to improve greatly in reflecting; or how Ms.Lees likes to say it: thinking about our thinking.
Should we continue blogging?
When using blogger, we learn a multitude of skills, such as learning how to make constructive comments on other people's work and using others' feedback to improve your own work. Having such expedient comments through blogger certainly helps. Being able to make constructive comments is a vital life skill, as it allows you to work with others by collaborating and pointing out flaws in others' work while at the same time being encouraging. In addition, bearing in mind how Blogger is an electronic medium, it is susceptible to various techinical issues. This requires us to use critical thinking in order to solve issues that may arise. For example, if the spaces in your posts appear different from how you wrote them, you could experiment with Blogger to find a solution, such as editing the text directly in HTML to fix formatting errors.
As for suggestions to augment our blogging experience, larger groups would be a better idea. In a group of six to eight people, there would be more posts to comment on. As well, if the teacher said to comment on three other posts, and someone garnered numerous comments while another received none, it would be a valuable lesson in sense of audience. As well, having more members would mitigate the negative effects from members who do not post in a timely manner.
Should We Continue Blogging?
To be honest, I only have one problem with blogger.
The learning intentions behind using blogger include teaching us how to use blogger, encouraging the quieter students to speak up, allowing us to write for a bigger audience - and them giving us constructed criticism to improve our writing and responding skills.
However, when we actually do start blogging, which of these intentions are actually fulfilled? From my experience of blogging, many of these intentions were not achieved because of the lack of response from the "quieter students". We are not encouraging students to participate more if they refuse to try. As were some group members - simply responded with a "good job", "nice structure", or "I agree with you". This makes it extremely hard to expand on the conversation and connect beyond - especially if they don't respond to my response to their posts. Hence, I don't feel that my writing skills have improved by much, in fact, I believe that my writing skills have improved more from the in-class peer-edits rather than the response I receive from my blog group members.
Personally though, I think with the right system, we can work this problem out. I would suggest grouping the students with similar skill abilities would create more interesting discussions. But I do understand the downside of this resolution is that those groups with perhaps less skills in this area will not benefit as much since there might be less discussion and the responding skills will lack.
Nevertheless, other than this issue, I have nothing against blogger.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Regarding the Question
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Should we continue blogging?
Administrators - report back on my blog by November 24.
Students may also post additional comments on my blog if they wish to converse with students who are not part of their own group blog.
We will use your individual and group responses to decide whether we should continue using the blogs, or a variation of them.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Writing TIps
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qYRHt62-uiZWa53L-O_oh4rpisaU3AWh02bR4sIyUVk/edit
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Edit posts
Click on the "edit" link of the post you wish to edit.
If you have troupe in " compose" mode, type in HTML mode & transpose to "compose" mode before posting.
Paragraph spacing
VERY SERIOUS PROBLEM! MULTIPLE PEOPLE!
Monday, November 7, 2011
Problem
Friday, November 4, 2011
En 9 binder / portfolio checklist and Prep
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y9DDCi1O7Xf97OIrarS7_4_2uRI7Tb0sM-oVX1QJ56U/edit
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Are you still having trouble posting?
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Following Block 1's Homework Helper
I can't seem to follow the homework helper even if i scrolled down to the bottom. There is nothing under "Followers" that I could find of on my computer. Do you have any suggestions?