Promoting creative thinking through umw blogs
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Elizabeth Franklin Lewis University of Mary Washington Faculty Academy May 12-13, 2010 Promoting Creative Thinking Through UMW Blogs
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Transcript of Promoting creative thinking through umw blogs
Elizabeth Franklin LewisUniversity of Mary Washington Faculty
AcademyMay 12-13, 2010
Promoting Creative Thinking Through UMW Blogs
History of an advanced writing course in Spanish:
Evolved from advanced Spanish grammar course that was WI to advanced writing (still WI) that fulfills the “process” portion of ALP general education requirement
Goals:To improve every student’s writing in Spanish from
use of grammar and syntax, to tlexical choices, and the development of a more sophisticated styleencourage a deeper engagement with writing and with
language provide students tools for life-long learning in Spanishsupport students’ individual career and personal goalsfoster creative solutions to problems
UMW Blogs helped me do all of the above!
The class blog: http://span413.umwblogs.org
A place where the class worked as a groupworkshop modelexamples of
Spanish grammatical and lexical concepts in action
instructions and examples for individual blogs
Individual blogsPortfolio model
Final project on topic of students’ choosing (pages)
Daily/weekly work (posts)“Entradas”—developed
ideas for project“Ejemplos de gramática”—
grammar in action“Vocabulario”—a running
list of useful words in Spanish associated with the project
Organized these 3 sections with categories
Literatura y dicatura en Chile
Bienvenidos al restaurante español
Salvador Dalí y Federico García Lorca
El mate en la cultura argentina
El mundo de Otto (Haiku)
La Guerra del Narco de México
El burro versus el toro
Future of the course:Although I have in mind ways to improve the course, I plan
to continue using the blog-portfolio format.
It helps students develop the various components that create good (or at least better) writing in Spanish and connects those parts together better for them
It provides them with important tools that will enable them to continue growing as writers and thinkers on their own
Blogs foster active and creative thinking and learning in students and make their writing more relevant and meaningful.
