TJ12 Students´work on the blog during the strike

Before teachers from public schools began the strike, I tried to motivate students for them to finish all the activities on the blog.I told them that if they  finish all the activities, I will give a tenth part to them for the final grade. It was on April 22^nd, today is April 29^th and any student has done an activity on the blog.

TJ11 Reflection

Tabulating the information about students´opinion of the activities on the blog, I reflected on the way the blog was designed and  I think that maybe if students had done their activities on their pages and each group would have to comment on another group´page it would have be more intersting for students since they would have the opportunity to observe all their classmates´work and value their own work. I believe that in this way students could feel more engaged instead of doing all their activities in different places where they could not see their progress nor their classmates.

TJ10 Students´ production on the blog

When I was checking students´work on the blog, I could notice that most of the students did mistakes using the expressions they had to choose when writing comments. They continued writing sentences without subjects and with bad punctuation. I also noticed that some of them wrote the activities in Spanish or in Spanglish. I also realized that most of the students did the easiest and shortest activities. I can say that most of the students did not take advantage of the blog since I can see a very superficial work on the blog.Another aspect that students did not take into account was the replies  I made to their comments. I replied  to students´comments for them to correct the activities when necessary but any student took them into consideration altough I asked them in class to check them at home and correct the activities.

TJ9 Working on the blog in the system class.

In the system class, students did the activities on the blog and  I could observe different attitudes and behaviours in them. First of all,I noticed that although students had the instructions of the activities on the blog,they asked me "teacher what do I have to do? ".I could see that students did not like to read long texts since they were lazy to read all the instructions.I thought that maybe the instructions were very long in some activities. Another issue that I could observe in the groups was that some students did all the activities and the others did not do anything although I encouraged them to help their classmates.I also noticed that students got confused using two pages on the blog.Though students had the instructions on the blog they wanted to be told what they had to. Furthermore, I observed that although theory says that teenagers are digital natives because they were born in a digital era, the students who participated in the research project using the blog have difficulties using technological tools. For instance,some students asked me about how to upload a picture. I really believed that becuase they are familiar with social networks like facebook, they would use technological tools very easy,but some of the students showed difficulties using the blog  and lack of interest.

I also realized that some students did not do the activities on the blog because they were not mandatory and although I tried to motivate them with some extra marks in English class they did not care about that. Moreover, I think that parents were not very attentive to check if students had taken advantage of the blog although they knew that it was a very useful resource for students to practice English at home.

TJ8 Autonomous work on the blog

I assigned  students some activities to be done at home,but most of them did not do the actvities on their own. This work was mostly done  in the system class.I noticed that students who work best in English class were the same who worked a lot on the blog. However, two or three students whose work had been very low in English class asked me some doubts they had about the activties on the blog. I  also want to highlight that one student who failed almost all the subjects did many activities on the blog on his own at home.

TJ7 Working on the blog during the Holy Week

On March 28^th, I gave a worksheet to students for them to solve some activities on the blog during the Holy Week. This worksheet was given during the parents´ meeting of the first term at school. I reminded parents that the blog was a very useful tool for students to practice English at home.I also asked parents to pay attention to students´ work on the blog during the Holy Week for them to take advantage of it. Moreover, I clarified that students who do the activities will have some extra marks in English class, and students who had failed the English subject in the first term had to do these activities as a part of the recovery work.

The activities that students had to do were (3.welcome, 5.intrdoduce yourself, 6. English sentence structure and 7. Writing paragraphs).Students also had to give their opinions about each one of the activities answering a short survey in Spanish. I explained in detail how to solve the survey to students who told me that they did not understand this part.

One day before finishing the Holy Week,I checked students´work on the blog and only very few students had done an activity on the blog.I did not understand why if they had had an entire week to work on it,they did the activities at the last minute.

TJ6 Second time working on the blog

On March 16^th, students were in contact with their Kidblog for the second time. During this session in system class, they had to make a post about their welcome to their classmates on their group page. They had to write the word welcome as the title of their post, choose an image related to this word and introduce themselves in a short way. I noticed that some students easily did the activity, but others not. I took advantage of the students who finished quickly to help the other students. In this way, most of the students could do the activity.

TJ5 Students´ first contact with their kidblog

On March 9th, 801 grade students had their first contact with their Kidblog in the system class .I showed the blog to them and asked them to go to the activity "Instructions to decorate your group page". I asked them to read the instructions and do the corresponding activities. Most of the students asked me "teacher what do I have to do?” I thought that it was a behaviour that showed they are not autonomous learners. In other words, they always want the teacher to tell them what to do. I tell them many times to do the activities following the instructions. I noticed that there were some groups who quickly finished the activity and others who had problems and did not understand what they have to do. So I asked the students who had already finished the activities to help their classmates.

I observed that students enjoyed the activity of choosing an image for their avatars. Also, I noticed that students had difficulties to write their comments although the expressions were given. It means that although students had a bank of expressions to use, some of them wrote the comments incorrectly.

Another thing that I realized after this first students´ contact with the blog was that I made some comments for them to correct the mistakes they made when writing comments, but they did not take them into account and they did not correct their comments.

TJ4 Grouping students

On March 2^nd, I decided to group students according to my opinion because they made groups with their best friends and it was not well for them to work in class. I organized the groups to work in the blog leaving a very good student in English class in each group for him o her to help their classmates in the activities. This day students worked very well creating the name of their group page in the blog.

TJ3 Analysing different blogs.

On February 23^rd, in English class students analysed different kinds of blogs related to the topics they liked the most. Students located each one of the parts of the blog and talked about the topic and the design of the blog. In general, students said that they did not liked the blogs that had a lot of text, they liked the blogs that have attractive images and colours and short texts.

TJ2 Studying the parts of a blog

On February 9^th, students had an assignment in which they had to search about the parts of the blog in google. I checked homework and only 5 students did it. So, I decided to write each one of the parts of the blog on the board and with the help of the students who did homework, I clarify each one of the parts of the blog. Then, I resolved that students drew and located each one of the parts of a blog in a piece of paper.

Improving the blog

 

 

 

After talking with the teachers,I began to explore other blogs and ask some colleagues about how to improve the appearance of my blog becuase it did not look like a blog.A colleague who is doing a master program at Los Andes University in education gave me the idea to have two pages on the blog.The first one to present the activities to students and the second one for students to do the activities.Then,I started to separate the practicing page and the writing page where students will develop their writing process.In each activity, I inserted  the link of the writing page for students to carry out the writing activity.

Afterwards,I had a meeting with my research directors (Professor Nohora Bryan and Ana Maria de Samper).In this meeting I showed the changes I have made in the blog to them and they liked the new appearance of the blog.They gave me some suggestions (They told me to change the name of the Practicing page to Instructions,and to add useful language on the Writing Adventure page for students to take them into account when doing the activities.Subsequently,I decided to change the design of the blog to make it more attractive for my students since the first design was too serious and no attractive for teenagers.

Analyzing the blog

Analysing the blog with the teachers who asses my research project,they realized that the blog did not look like a blog but like a repository of activities.For that reason,we began to discuss the way I could promote the development of a blog without forgetting the activities that were designed wth the objective of reinforcing and clarifing important aspects for students to write in English.

We agreed that it would be crucial that students had a space to write in English in a free way talking about things they are interested in according to the checklist they answered and real life in general,but we did not agree with the way this space would be designed in kidblog.Some ideas were that students could interact on their group´s page, on the teacher´s page and on each student´s page.Although we discussed that three pages for students to write would be too much.That is why,the teachers recommended me to visit other blogs and ask the technology teacher at the university to have more ideas about how to really promote the use of a blog that  improves and fosters students´wrting skill.I asked the teacher Claudia Acero and she told me that it woul be very important that students tested the entries in order to know if they understand them.

TJ1 Implementing the blog

On february 2nd,2015 I began the process to implement the blog with eigth graders . That day I assigned a homework to my students about what a blog is,its characteristics ,the communicative skill that is more strengthened through it, the type of documents that can be uploaded in it and the aspects that are necessary to take into account before making a comment.
Today,I told students that they had to make groups of three to work on the blog in some group activities.I recommended  my students to work with  people they feel well to work with.

Students made groups and shared information about blogs.Most of the students did not do this homework since they knew it would not be graded.I gave to my students the answers of each one of the questions they had to search in Spanish for them to read and complement what they had searched.

Finally,students read about blogs and  they discussed and complemented each one of the questions. 

Writing diagnosis

On January 23rd,2015 I asked the 801 students to write about their vacations in English.some of them said that  it was a very broad topic  to write about. I told them that they had 20 minutes to write as much as posible.The students who brought the English dictionary to class began to use it and the others began to ask the teacher and their classmates.Some students asked me a lot,teacher,how do you say "me" in English?. Five students did not write anything.

According to students´texts I can observe that the most common problems in wrting are:

- Lack of subject before verbs.
- Lack of meaning.
- Copy from their classmates.
-They do not use appropriate words.For instance,a student wrote " exit" to talk about the verb "go".He wrote: " I and my familiy exit to the museum of Gold"
- They do not use verb tenses correctly.
-They do not know how to use appropraitely personal pronouns and object pronouns.A student wrote: " me the pass in house"
- They use the verb to be to write sentences with other verbs.A student wrote: " I am went Fusa"
- Two students do not know how to search words in the dictionary since they wrote the first word that appears in it.For example,adv (adverb).
- They write in English as they do in Spanish.A student wrote: " the year new"