Home-Based Entrepreneur

Friday, October 31, 2003

ESL and Web Logs. As usual, Anne is pushing the envelope with a really interesting project dealing with ESL students teaming up with native English speakers using Web logs. She says:

The premise is that weblogs can be used as an effective tool for language learning for ESL (English as a Second Language) students as well as native English students. Providing opportunities for increased social, academic, and technological participation will facilitate the process by which ESL students can more quickly and efficiently develop their language skills. The native English-speaking students will also learn and develop their language skills and have the additional opportunity to practice helping others with skills they have already internalized. Cooperative learning can improve achievement and relationships. Students of different ethnic backgrounds have much to learn from each other. My belief is that when working together, they can gain a greater respect and learning from each other and reach higher academic goals.

Well said, and it's just another example of what I think is the most powerful part of what Web logs can do...bring people together to learn. I mentioned a couple of days ago that we're trying to hook up some of our students with a class in Sao Paulo for a cultural exchange. Web logs make that so much easier, and they provide so much more flexibility than older models. The opportunities for such collaborations are limitless, and I think one goal of the edu-Web logging group should be to promote and facilitate more collaborations like this. I just put Anne's project feed into my aggregator and will be following and learning along. [Weblogg-ed News]
3:56:19 PM

A Mini-Alamo for American Journalism. Bill Moyers is one of my heroes. I can't let this interview in Buzzflash go un-blogged. The current state of journalism and media in this country is pretty embarassing. He's another guy who I wish would start a Web log.

I think these forces have unbalanced the relationship between this White House and the press. Frankly, even if we had tried it in LBJ's time, we wouldn't have gotten away with the kind of press conference President Bush conducted on the eve of the invasion of Iraq -- the one that even the President admitted was wholly scripted, with reporters raising their hands and posing so as to appear spontaneous. Matt Taibbi wrote in The New York Press at the time that it was like a mini-Alamo for American journalism. I'd say it was more a collective Jonestown-like suicide. At least the defenders of the Alamo put up a fight.

[Weblogg-ed News]
3:54:32 PM