Activities: Mystery Guests

Inviting a mystery guest to your tutor blog or class blog is a great way of stimulating interest and One of the problems that some teachers have reported about blogging projects is that once the novelty of setting up a blog has passed, it's easy for things to run out of steam.

Keeping the momentum going is difficult, but there are many ways in which you can do this. All it takes is imagination, and in the case below, help from a friend.

Asking a mystery guest to post to your class blog or tutor blog can often lead to very interesting discussions - if you get the guest (who may be a relative of yours, a colleague you met online or another teacher or student in another class - up to you!) to write, then ask them to post some clues as to their identity and let the students try to guess where they come from, who they are, etc.

Here's an example of this activity on a class blog: Beeonline, which took place back in 2003
- scroll down to the beginning of the page and then work your way up to see the amount of enthusiasm (and language) that was generated.

Types of Educational Blogs

The terms class blog, learner blog and tutor blog come from Aaron Campbell's February 2003 article on blogging, and are still a useful way of thinking about the kind of blogging project you may want to do with learners:

• tutor blog - Teachers use this type of blog to post information about the syllabus and homework assignments. Sometimes teachers write about their lives, sharing reflections about local culture or the target culture and language to stimulate online and in-class discussion. Students can respond only by writing comments to the teacher's posts.

• class blog - This is a shared discussion space between students and teacher, where resource links may also be quickly accessed. It is an extracurricular space, and as such can be used to encourage students to reflect on themes touched upon in class. Learners have a greater sense of freedom and involvement with this type of blog than with the tutor blog.
  

• learner blog - This is probably the most rewarding type of blog for learners. Each student has an individual blog that becomes his or her personal online space. Learners are encouraged to use the blog to write about what interests them; they can post photos and audio, make comments on other students' blogs, and quickly save links to favourite resources.
  

In 'Redefining the Blog: From Composition Class to Flexible Learning', I revisited this and added one more type, the teacher blog:

• teacher blog - Teachers use blogs, often for self-reflection and as learning journals, but also for recording Web site links and information. An advantage to using a blog instead of a paper-based teaching journal is that teachers can obtain an online audience of peers to help the reflective process through their comments.
  

References:

Campbell, A.P. (2003) Weblogs for use with ESL Classes. The Internet TESL Journal 9 (2). http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Campbell-Weblogs.html

Stanley, Graham. (2006). Redefining the Blog: From composition class to flexible learning. In Hanson-Smith, Elizabeth, and Sarah Rilling (Eds.). Learning languages through technology. Alexandria, Virginia, USA: TESOL. pp. 187-200.