Random Thoughts

Bee asked if SMiELT had kept me from blogging. I realized that I didn’t make myself clear. I would not ever say SMiELT kept me from posting to this blog or to Moving Along. I may have used it as an excuse on occasion, but that isn’t really what happened.

The big division of loyalties that I wanted to comment on in my previous post was between my two blogs. I have been posting slightly more regularly on Moving Along than I have been here. I don’t use Moving Along much except during EVO sessions, for some reason or another. But during EVO, I use it more than I do this blog because most of what I am thinking about and writing about is related to the EVO session.

When I am exploring different tools for a session like SMiELT, I don’t spend as much time reading other blogs as I normally do. And when I do read them, I read more superficially. I seldom reflect on them the way I try to otherwise because I am usually in more of a hurry. In that way, I guess maybe SMiELT did affect the amount of blogging I have done these last 6 weeks.

SMiELT, like all the other EVO sessions I have participated in, has been a great experience. I have learned about tools I would never really have looked at on my own. I have tried them out and attempted, at least, to give them a chance. If I haven’t kept up my every-day blogging here the way I wanted to, oh well… There’s always the other 46 weeks out of the year!

Well, I haven’t been here much lately, have I? We are entering Week 6 of Social Media in English Language Teaching. It has been interesting for me to participate as a co-moderator, to see it from the inside. Right now we are playing a HipBone game. I have been playing HipBone games with my students for years, and this is the first time I have seen one played online. The board we are playing on at the moment looks like this:

It is really interesting to see how this plays out online. It is a lot like the way it plays out in person except there is a lot more time between moves. And, since I volunteered to update the board after each move, I have learned more about actually doing something in Drupal.

And then, of course, there is the fact that I really like wordpress better than Blogger. Even though I am not posting there much more than I am here, I find that it just works better for me. I year or so ago, I copied everything here over into Moving Along, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to close this blog. Somebody asked me not too ling ago why I was reluctant to give up this blog, and I didn’t have a real good answer. I guess it is force of habit more than anything else.

Once the SMiELT session is over, I hope to be back here full-time again. Let’s see how good I am at actually doing that!

As you know if you have been reading here, I am involved with a TESOL EVO session on social media. It has been a very interesting experience. I am learning that I am a decidedly unsocial person. Actually, I knew that before, but I am being reminded every day now. But that is another post…

When we started the session we had many participants and, as you would expect, we have lost a good number of them. Or at least they are not actively participating anymore. I am especially aware of this today because one of the remaining participants contacted me to ask me what was going on, why there were so few of us left.

I have the same problem with my face-to-face adult ESL classes. People have great intentions. Sometimes their life situations become more complicated or a work schedule change makes a class impossible. Sometimes, too, they just discover that the class isn’t right for them.

Most programs know that this is going to happen. But what I am starting to realize is the extent to which other students/participants feel deserted by those who no longer attend. While we may understand on an intellectual level, I am seeing that it does have effects on an emotional level. Classrooms, virtual or traditional, are about community for many of us, and it hurts when that community loses members.

This is a new way for me to think about attrition. Am I overreacting?

While I have been feeling so bad for almost a week now, I haven’t been doing much online. I come home from work and go to bed. But on occasion I have gone online and played around a little, mostly in connection with the EVO2008 session I am supposed to be co-moderating on Social Media in English Language Teaching.

We are looking at uses of blogs, wikis, Twitter, the 43 Trio, del.icio.us and other tools in language classes of different kinds. It is interesting.

I have also been posting a bit more on my other blog, Moving Along, as part of the session. I haven’t been doing as much there as I should be, but there have been some posts.

I am also, at the moment, trying to help my daughter figure out a good alternative to iTunes, now that she is running Linux on her computer. The front runner seems to be Amazon, actually. Of course, that might not work for the real serious user, but I think it might work for her. We’ll see.

So, I hope to eventually get back to reading and posting like I should be here. Maybe this is even that start of that. I would like to think so, but…