Report on my first week

Task 1
I’ve opened an account at Blogger.com. That was easy. However, I had difficulties with posting my picture. It turned out that users of Mozilla can’t see all the details of either blogger backgrounds or photos. My husband, who knows a lot more about computing than I ever will, told me the reason for the letter could be the fact that photos are stored elsewhere. I had no difficulties with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. In order to be friendly towards Microsoft incompatible people (I’m one of them) I chose a template Mozilla has no difficulties with. However, I still don't know hoe to format my paragraphs: I'd like to add a bit of space between them.

Task 2
I posted my introduction to the group as my first entry. Probably because I personally have difficulties matching the details from participants’ introductions with their personal blogs. I hope this will help. I am trying really hard to picture you all as real people.

Task 3
I’ve managed to open an account in Blog EFL/ESL wiki and added my Blogger URL.

Task 4
I joined Group 1. I’ve read the majority of the articles from the extensive list our tutors suggested. I sent a single entry though, but I am planning to send more.

Task 5
I attended the Tappedin session with Ann. I’d never been to a chat room before. At first it felt just like racing a car in my sons’ computer games (everything went so fast).
I had difficulties when logging in. I was in my office at the college and the firewall on the college server didn’t allow me to do what I wanted. A frantic rush followed when I was trying to find the technician. I was lucky and managed to participate. I got a personal message from Aleyandra. Thank you very much. However, I couldn’t answer it. This is something I still have to learn.

To blog or not to blog

I'’m used to sharing my ideas with the people I know or at least can see, whether that'’s my family, my students or colleagues. Cyberspace is beyond my comprehension.
Although I’'ve checked the names and photos of the participants more than a couple of times, I can'’t really imagine who I’'m writing for. They all seem nice, but distant, not familiar.
I was wondering, does the fact that we'’re writing for a faceless audience bother anybody?
Seeing so many blogs of the journal type makes me think people enjoy it. Those who don'’t obviously don’'t blog or use the blog for different reasons.
I suppose this changes when a blogger starts getting comments from regular readers and a contact is created.
During the chat with Ann, I raised the issue of students'’ lack of interest or even downright refusal to blog. Bee said she spends quite some time in the computing lab with her students. I can understand that now. Observing my own reactions to the unknown audience, I can sympathize with my students. Yeah, it'’s probably wise to stay with them longer, at least until two-way communication started and their audience started to get its shape.

Introduction

My name is Sarolta ("S" is pronounced as "Sh" in Shelley) Godnic Vicic and I come from Korte, a little village in the coastal region of Slovenia, Europe (time zone: GMT+1).
I'm an ESP teacher at TURISTICA - College of Tourism in Portoroz. I like teaching and I like working with young people. Although I find teaching English for tourism challenging and rewarding, I keep looking for new ideas and approaches that would make my teaching more efficient and my students more active.
I'm interested in discourse analysis, corpus-based methods, problem-based learning, teaching writing and CALL.
I've joined the group because I'd like to learn more about using blogs and wikis in EFL classroom contexts.
I've tried creating a blog. It wasn't difficult. I've played in a Wiki sandbox. No big deal. However, making blogging a meaningful activity to students has so far proved to be an impossible task for me. So I really hope that by the end of these six weeks I'll have developed a deeper understanding of blogs and wikis, which will in effect help me engage my students in activities that would help them improve their writing skills in English.