Muddiest points, 10 August

A number of the "muddiest points" from the session(s) on August 10 I've answered previously, so I will direct you to answers that you'll find here on this blog:

• How do you set up a "news aggregator" -- and what is RSS?
• Using "paste special" to copy text off of the Internet into a Word document
• How to change the default start page of your browser
• Which is better, text or images?
• What's podcasting?
• Coping with geekspeak
  

In a separate post, I've answered the question "Why bother with technology?"

And finally, someone wanted to know how to find things on Google. I would argue that they didn't mean Google, they meant finding things on the Internet...

Muddiest points, 16 June

There were various "muddiest points" in today's session regarding blogs and blogging...

Again, for some of these there were already answers on this blog, so I'll point you there for some of them:

How do you set up a blog?
There are lots of providers of blogging services, with Blogger.com being one of the best known. Here's how to set a blog up with Blogger; here's how to set a blog up at Zoomblog, which is what this blog used to use; and here's a comparison of the two.

Note that if you're not that confident with technology, Blogger may prove just slightly easier for you.

If you want a really simple, really basic blog, then an alternative would be Yahoo 360º, for which you'd need a Yahoo account.

How blogging can be useful in English teaching
I'll point you to a previous post to answer the question what can you do with a blog?

More about blogs and blogging
To learn more about the subject, you have further links in the sidebar.

And one last "muddiest point" for today...
Why is blogging so cool and innovative?

Muddiest points, 6 April

Not surprisingly, as we had no Internet connection, and I couldn't show you what a blog is, "blogs" was the muddiest point for the session this morning. Always have a "Plan B", as I suggested!

Specifically, someone said "the way in which blogs can be useful in English teaching". In a previous post, I suggested some of the things that you can do with a blog...

Do feel free to use the "comments" link that you will find below each of the posts on this blog, by the way!

In previous posts I've also explained how to set a blog up, both on Blogger.com and on Zoomblog.

Two others -- which a 90-minute session really doesn't give us time to look at properly -- were RSS and podcasting.

And finally, difficulties with the terminology, something lots of people find hard -- but which shouldn't put you off using technology!

Muddiest points, 17 March

The following were the "muddiest points" from our session on March 17th.

• "What's the purpose of this blog?" someone asked, a great question, which I've answered in a separate post. (One of the things I like about the muddiest point technique is that it makes the teacher think!)
• "How do you actually create a blog?" is a question the session doesn't allow time for, but which I've answered previously. You have separate tutorials for Blogger and for Zoomblog (two of the big providers of blogging services), and a comparison of the two, to help you determine which might be better
• "Why is Firefox better than Internet Explorer?"
  
• "Webquests" someone else said -- for which you now have a series of useful links

New to technology?
Several people made comments along the lines of "I've almost no experience in information technology and I don't understand anything yet" and "it's all new to me and I need practice". You now have some suggestions on how to cope with that...

CATs and muddiest points

The "muddiest point" (one which you will find a number of posts on this blog) is one of many classroom assessment techniques (CATs) which are popular in US colleges.

The muddiest point basically involves giving your learners a slip of paper on which they record the one thing they are left most puzzled about at the end of the lesson, which they have understood least clearly. You then collect these in, and respond to them.

It could be that you respond at the beginning of the next class; if you have a blog, however, you can respond there...

Some CATs at least you could apply to language teaching...