"You talk as if a god had made the Machine.. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind."The machine stops - 1909 - Forster

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY: diary writing and paper blogging

Classtools is a fabulous site, with great resources to use with students.

These are the steps my class and I went through when dealing with diary writing.

1) Choosing a fictional, historical, cartoon or legendary character.


2) Creating Fakebook profiles and writing diary entries.


Some of them didn't use the web tool and drew their own profiles on paper.

Here are some samples from students' works.


Click here to view fullscreen.






Click here to view fullscreen


Click here to view fullscreen

3) Editing the writing and getting feedback from the teacher

4) Printing the profiles

5) "Visiting" each other's profiles and commenting on them using post-it notes.


Students, in their character's shoes, could leave a public message on the wall, that everyone could read and comment, or write a private "message" ( a folded post-it ) that only the owner of the profile could open and read.














 This activity, which took us 3 class hours , let the students  have a lot of practice at asking questions, reading and writing. And I especially liked the fact that both technology and paper proved to be effective tools and worked together to reach the teaching aim.

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