Our textbook continued exploring Student Activities in the Online Environment. I particularly enjoyed reading about Peer-Review. I used to use Peer-Review when I taught middle school/high school but haven’t yet used it in a College setting–at least not in a way that was graded. Page 206 describes how “students should be graded as much on their own work as reviewers as on their classmates’ reviews of their work.” I think that certainly could be a motivating tool for encouraging students to “grade” their classmate’s work. Additionally looking over somehow else’s paper requires one to pay attention to details such as spelling or grammar–which can easily be overlooked.

I enjoyed finding out many reasons for blogging as seen in Lisa’s slidecast on blogging. I pondered about the advantages and disadvantages of using blogs for my own class. I think a main advantage would be for students to keep a “journal” of what was learned in class and use their blog to summarize their class (in the target language). In terms of disadvantages, I’m not really sure yet. I’d have to try it out to know.

Another task we had to complete this week was to check out Engrade. I have been use Gradekeeper for years and have found it useful. However, I find Engrade a lot easier to use–especially since it’s accessible anywhere (from any computer) so grades and attendance are easy to input and retrieve. After testing it out, I’m now thinking of using Engrade instead of Gradekeeper.

Pilar’s tutorial made creating a Google website quite simple. I was able to create my own mini-website in a lot less time than I would have imagined. Click here to view my new mini-website. I think that having a website, as “little” or simple as it can be creates a “presence” on the World Wide Web which in itself is something. Having students read up about the instructor and view information (such as next semester’s schedule) could be useful.