Blogging to Learn English

Craig Wherlock teaches English as a foreign language in Thessaloniki, Northern Greece, to 13- and 14-year-olds during the day and adults at night. He estimates that only 1-2% of homes in Greece have access to broadband, and recently read that only 27% of Greeks have ever even used the Internet--so while he would love to involve his students in podcasting or video sharing, it's only realistic to do blogging right now. And blogging his students do!

Each class has a class blog, and he gives assignments to the class to write posts from home in English. One of his most successful assignments was to ask each of the students to post "10 special things you have done that very few other people have done," for which he got very enthusiastic responses.

Blogging can have an incredibly powerful, transformative effect for some students, and Craig describes the excitement when students realize that they can quickly have an international "audience." A great place to learn about educational blogging ("edublogging") is at SupportBlogging.com, a collaborative wiki built by "edubloggers" themselves, and that lists (and allows you to search) over 300 blogs, websites, and articles on educational blogging.

Listen to Craig describe his blogging experiences in a quick five-minute audio interview here, visit his own blog here, or visit one of his class blogs here.