Get to know Weblog

Understand the weblog and its applications What is the weblog? What are some popular English learning weblogs?
Well, the meaning of weblog is not so easy to explain. I tried to find answers in the two following places.
– Yahoo Knowledge - Wikipedia
The word “blog” is the short term for weblog. The word “weblog” was invented around 1997 by a person named Jorn Barger. The meaning of it is to use web to create personal log with periodicity. Blogs provides commentary or news on different subjects, such as food, traveling, local news, etc. Another function of blog is that it is the personal diary. People write about everyday life in their own blogs to keep a record or let out their emotions. Blog contains not only text, but also images, link to other blogs, favorite web pages and other media. The special thing we should notice about blog is that it can create forum for others to interact with the owner of the blog and leave comments. Due to these special features blog can also be used as a place to provide class material online: related websites, medias, or articles can be put on to the blog for students to click for self learning. Also teacher and students can communicate through interactive format.
Here I listed some of the ESL weblogs.
English ESL Weblog from Using English.com

ESL- Learning English Culturally TOP THREE!!!

AFE-American Film English

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day For Teaching ESL& EFL TOP THREE !!!

Inspirational Lane TOP THREE !!!

Understand specific weblog features and functions. What can the weblog do compared to the traditional English learning website? What are RSS/ permalinks/ trackback?
For RSS/permalinks/trackback, I tried to find answers in two places as same as the last question.

RSS is a kind of XML format used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries or news headlines. That means you can use RSS to subscribe for news, blogs, or message boards. If there are new articles, news or messages being created, you will receive a notice, and you will not have to spend time looking for new postings, it will tell you automatically.
- Yahoo KNowledge
- Wikipedia

Permalinks (permanent link) is a URL that points to a specific blogging entry and remained unchanged. It avoids link rot. By providing this kind of links, the visitors would not click into a link and discover the content they wish to see are replaced by something else.
- Wikipedia
Trackback can be simply explained as to “cite”. When you see interesting articles in one’s blog and want to make comment or evaluate in your own blog, you can use this function. Just go the article you would like to discuss about and click “response”. You will then see a cited web address for the article. Edit your article as usual and paste the cited web address in to the column. The blog you are evaluating will receive a notification to know you have cited something from it. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles.
- Yahoo Knowledge -Wikipedia
After explaining about the three functions and features of weblog, we can clearly see the differences between traditional websites and weblogs. While traditional website can only display material they prepared and provides links to other related web resources, weblogs can do more. RSS enables teacher/student to receive new postings or other things from blogs they think are useful to them without spending time surfing. They can get new things immediately. Permalinks allows teacher/student to always visit their favorite websites or blogs without having to worry that next time the material would disappear or displaced. And trackback let teacher/student know who are visiting their weblogs and make record to decide what kind of materials should be provided.

Explore blog features and use them in your blog. How can team blog functions (e.g., comments, moderation, trackback, and pingback) support English reading and writing?
Those functions are used to send notification to the blog where the article being referred to. In this way the two authors would know that they have some common interests and would read each other’s ideas then keep giving feedbacks. In the exchanging, the ability of reading and writing are practiced. The functions enable people to get connect together and share thoughts through reading and writing online.
How can multimedia presentation (e.g., pictures, and videos, and audio) support English listening and speaking?
Listening and speaking require lots of practice. Often there are some students who are not confident enough to make a speech in class therefore lose the chances of practicing. Multimedia presentations provide practices that allow those to practice by themselves at any time. As for listening, we can never have someone talking every minute to train our listening ability. Designed exercises in multimedia trains our listening in different contexts and also let us practice anytime.