To develop better writing skills, students should be given more chances to write. However, teachers may not have enough time for students to write during lessons and some students are not interested in writing. With the help of Edblog, writing can be more interesting and could help in catering learners’ diversity. The following are some ideas about how to incorporate Edblog in developing students’ writing skills.

Watch and write

To arouse students’ interest towards writing, we could attach videos into Edblog. Teachers can base on the video content to arouse students’ interest towards the topic and assign writing tasks to the students. Here are some possible writing tasks.

-          Descriptive writing: Ask students to write about what happens in the video, for example: http://edblog.hkedcity.net/english/category/writing/

-          Movie review: Ask students to summarize the content of the movies, and write about their feelings towards the movies.

-          Creative writing: Ask students to create another ending for the video or movie.

Collaborative Writing

Writing is usually done by oneself, however, writing can also be done collaboratively. With the use of Edblog, students could work collaboratively with peers to finish a piece of writing. This methodology not only encourages collaboration among students, but also helps to build students’ confidence towards writing. Teachers could base on the nature of the tasks (e.g. class writing, group writing, etc.) to assign writers’ and readers’ rights for groups of students using Account Control System. Here are some possible collaborative writing tasks.

-          Script writing (by a class): Ask students to continue a story based on a specific topic or a story. The story could be adopted from some story books. For example,

http://edblog.hkedcity.net/miss_wong/category/story-creator/

-          Argumentative writing (by groups): Assign some groups to contribute positive ideas on a specific topic and others to contribute negative ideas. Students then based on the ideas collected to write an argumentative essay in groups.

Peer Evaluation in writing

Edblog provides an easy way for students to learn from others’ writings and comment on others’ work. After students write the essays on Edblog, other students could provide their feedback to others by clicking “Comment”. The platform allows many students could comment on one’s writing, too. This helps to encourage students to write more and help them to refine their writings.

Teachers could also provide guidelines for students when they assess others’ work. Here are some possible peer evaluation tasks.

-          General comments: Ask students to give comments based on their general impression on others’ writing (e.g. the ideas of the writing, the organization of the writing, etc.)

-          Comments on content: Ask students to give comments based on the content (e.g. the relevance of the content to the topics, the effectiveness of the ending, etc.)