...and welcome to the WELL blog! This will be our open space on the web where we'll share conversations and extend our learning networks. This online journal is an ongoing contstruction that was started with previous WELL participants and will continue growing with your contributions!

My name is Carla Raguseo and I'll be your guide to "the center of the web 2.0"! Together we'll explore the potential of blogs and wikis for language learning.

I started my first blog for an online exchange project with my students six years ago. Since then, each new blog or wiki I created for my classes or for my own professional development has been a path to reflections and unexpected discoveries. Check out some of them here.

I'd like to invite you to introduce yourselves and share your experiences with blogs and wikis as well as your expectations for this course. Also, take your time to look around and make yourselves at home!

The relevance of PBL
Project Based Learning is a suitable approach for technology integration in the language classroom as it has many advantages. It gives the students the opportunity to collaborate and work in a group, solving real problems and encouraging self motivation and creativity.
I really enjoy using technology and I am all the time trying to learn about different new tools to use in my classroom. Throughout the WELL course, I have learnt to employ many new tools and I have used many others that I knew, but I did not use before. Sometimes because I lack the time to do it, or simply because I did not dare to use it.
I would really like to integrate all these new technologies into my classrooms, but to be honest, this does not apply to my reality nowadays. But as I have mentioned in some occasions, I am preparing myself for the future, as I will be able to put it into practice at any time.
This course gave me the opportunity to discover new tools and also to try them. I enjoy creating web lessons and collaborate in different spaces like Wikis and Blogs.
It is difficult to get myself up to date with all the Tics available, but it is easy to focus on my students needs and apply the most suitable ones for each group.
Doing this course made the difference, as I have learnt and reflect a lot. From now on I will try each TICs and analyse them to see whether they are appropriate for the task I am working on or for future tasks.

Dear WELL teachers,

Here we are, reaching the end of these exciting weeks we have spent sharing, asking, analyzing, exploring and learning together!

We have ventured to new online territories, creating, posting, commenting, editing and building knowledge collaboratively.

The "formal" process may have come to an end, but our connections will remain because we own the spaces we have built together!

Thanks for your curiosity, commitment and enthusiasm!

Let's keep learning!

Love,

Carla

- It helps students perceive the importance of learning a language as a communication tool.

- It provides a very powerful tool by means of which students can create content and improve their knowledge of the foreign language by participating in meaningful conversations in the target language.

- It promotes the development of higher order thinking skills, as teachers and students need to post entries which increase reflection, analysis, discussion and synthesis in order to establish a conversation and construct knowledge collectively.

- It encourages natural conversations between teacher and students in the same class as well as in different classes and even in different countries, thereby increasing awareness of perspectives outside the classroom and promoting learning about other cultures.

- It gives teachers the chance to develop a much more personal relationship with students and to establish a different kind of rapport with and among their students.