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My List of Ten Blogs

Ok, this is my ten blogs thing, I was tagged my @martulmj and @livesofteachers, who both have interesting blogs that I like. It's quite hard to get a new slant on it though, because lots of choices have been used up already and I don't want to repeat too many. I wanted to add some potentially new sites, so I'm going to be cheating ? a little bit!

One: Karenne Sylvester is pretty much everywhere online doing all sorts of things and writing interesting and thought provoking stuff. Hers was one of the first ELT blogs I started following and I found the courage to comment upon an interesting article asking 'Why do people comment?' - although I can't find it now and am starting to believe that I dreamt it. Having her reply to me gave me some confidence to continue and eventually start my own blog. She doesn't really need any advertising or introduction, but probably unbeknown to her, helped me get over my early trepidation, just by being, well, nice!

Two: Mark Andrews is a wonderful writer. His blog is full of feature-length posts showing great knowledge and research. I enjoyed this one with some great points to ponder on. Also the one about his dad, which is a truly moving blog post.

Three: A lot of people know his blog already, but I like it so I wanted to include it as Rick writes good stuff about various things. Recently, I liked the post entitled 'What are your bare essentials?' I think it's important to consider and reassess our attitudes towards the way we teach and what methods we are using.

Four: This is my Aussie friend Mr. Word Nerd, who is also a teacher. He writes wonderfully, telling tales of teaching as well as travelling.

Five: I'm not quite sure how he gets the time, but Richard Byrne at freetech4teachers is a constant provider of interesting online material, particularly tech tools. Aimed mainly at a US audience, but plenty of stuff for everyone I reckon.

Six: Say 'hi' to Michelle, a teacher in the south of Spain, like me, though we've never met in real life. I came across her blog thanks to her comments on mine. She has some cool ideas for stuff to do with young learners and I think her blog is worth a visit; another regular teacher in the online community!

Ok, cheating time...

Seven: This isn't a blog, it's a wiki, but I think it's a great idea. As Guido says, this wiki is a toolshed which ?wants to to be a place for teachers of English who are interested in using web 2.0 tools with their students?.

Eight: The Guardian sport blog, where would I be without it?! Mind you, the journalists can write some drivel, but the comments are usually great for a laugh.

Nine: I've recently discovered this blog, by a guy called Gary who is travelling the world. Firstly, I think it's an interesting blog, but secondly, I think it contains some great lesson material; including some wonderful photographs and regular video updates. Great stuff! He also has a youtube channel.

Ten: This photoblog has loads of great photos on. I love using images in class to provoke discussion and found this while hunting for good interesting shots. If you go to the 'tags' page you can browse for what you want fairly easily.

Finally, I wanted to put this as Darren puts forward a really good idea here, but he tagged me first and Marta also tagged him so that would break the rules! However, I like breaking rules, so there. This is the unofficial number eleven in my list of ten, because this one goes up to eleven, all right?!

I reckon there's some scope for more lesson collaboration than just videos. Maybe news stories, photos, pictures, cartoons and songs, as well as web tools, could go into a mixer for lesson ideas sharing. There must be a funky web tool that we could use to post things and share our thoughts and opinions.

Oh and while I'm at it, you're more than welcome to visit my class blog at www.thegrandmasduck.blogspot.com and say hi to my lovely students!

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