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Staff Development

Interactive Features of the BLE: The Blog and Glossary Tools

Unit value:

Target Audience:

Any new or existing BLE users on the SOAS staff. A basic knowledge of the BLE is useful but not essential.

Course Content:

A Blog is an online forum, diary, or journal. With the Blog Tool in the BLE an entire class or selected individuals can add new entries and comments. Blogs have a wide variety of uses, including creating reflective journals, for peer review and feedback, and encouraging critical thinking and creativity. Using group- or course Blogs can help foster lively discussion of course topics and concepts.

The BLE also contains a Glossary tool, which allows you to create course-specific glossaries. These glossaries can either be created in the BLE itself or imported from existing sources outside. They have a variety of uses, and are ideal for language learning, for example in creating collaborative vocabulary lists.

In this hands-on session, Wan-Li Gao will demonstrate how she has been using the Blog and Glossary tools with a number of her language courses in the Chinese Department. You will then have a chance to try creating a course Blog and Glossary of your own.

Aims and Objectives:

  • To introduce participants to the concept and basic functionality of blogs and online glossaries
  • To demonstrate some examples of their use
  • To discuss some of the benefits and challenges of using a blog and how it can motivate your students and enhance their learning
  • To practice using the blog and glossary tools on the BLE