As blogs provide opportuities to share information and comunicate with others, they seem to be a tool of greater use and benefit in the language classroom. Teachers can use blogs as a means to develop and improve several learning skills such as reading and writing, listening and discussing, as well as provide feedback on topics previously studied in class.
Benefits:
The specialists Fernette, Broke Eide and Will Richardson identified the following benefits iof the use of blogs in education:
- Can promote critical and analytical thinking
- Can Promote Creative, Intuitive and Associational thinking
- Can Promote Analogical thinking
- Potential for increased access and exposure to quality information
- Combination of solitary and social interaction
Uses:
Anne Davids suggests the following uses of blogs:
Reflective, journal type:
- reflect on the teaching experience
- keep a log of teacher
- write a description of a specific teaching unit
- describe what worked for you in the classroom or what didn't
- provide some teaching tips for other teachers.
- write about something you learned from another teacher.
- explain teaching insights you gain from what happens in your classes.
- share ideas for teaching activities or language games to use in the classroom.
- provide some how-to's on using specific technology in your own class or describe how you used this technology in your own class.
- explore important teaching and learning issues.
Class Blog:
- post class -related information such as calendars, events, homework assignments and other pertinent class information.
- post assignments based on literature readings and have students respond on their own weblogs, creating a kind of portfolio of their work.
- communicate with parents if you are teaching elementary school students.
- post prompts for writing.
- provide examples of classwork, vocabulary activities, or grammar games.
- provide online readings for your students to read and react to.
- gather and organize Internet resources for a specific course, providing links to appropriate sites and annotating the links as to what is relevant about them.
- post photos and comment on class activities.
- invite student comments or postings on issues in order to give them a writing voice.
- publish examples of good student writing done in class.
- show case student art, poetry, and creative stories.
- create a dynamic teaching site, posting not only class activities, discussion topics, links to additional information about topics they are studying in class, and readings to inspire learning.
- create a literature circle.
- create an online book club.
- make use of the commenting feature to have students publish messages on topics being used to develop language skills.
- ask students to create their own individual course blogs, where they can post their own ideas, reactions and written work.
- post tasks to carry out project-based learning tasks with students.
- build a class newsletter, using student-written articles and photos they take.
- link your class with another class somewhere else in the world.
Students can comment on blogs:
- their reactions to thought-provoking questions
- their reactions to photos you post.
- journal entries.
- results of surveys they carry out as part of a class unit.
- their ideas and opinions about topics discussed in class.
Students create their own weblogs:
- complete class writing assignments.
- create an ongoing portfolio of samples of their writing.
- express their opinions on topics you are studying in class.
- write comments, opinions, or questions on daily news items or issues of interest.
- discuss activities they did in class and tell what they think about them
- write about class topics, using newly
- showcase their best writing pieces.
Students create a shared weblog:
- complete project work in small groups, assigning each group a different task.-based learning.
- showcase products of project.
- complete a WebQuest.