Moblogging in language class?
Earlier today parts of the virtual strand team gave a presentation concerning the tools used in the virtual strand and our thoughts behind the choices we've made. We had also promised to give examples of how these tools could be used in the language learning classroom, but since this was a short 10 minute paper, we never had a chance to get around to that, so I thought I would write a short note on it here instead.
Students that are lucky enough to get to go abroad during their language education could easily make use of blogs to document their trips. Even if one doesn’t have the opportunity to go abroad, blogs could be used, of course, but one would have to consider how to design authentic tasks. Informing tourists about one's hometown in the target language might be one suggestion. Other ideas?
Students that are lucky enough to get to go abroad during their language education could easily make use of blogs to document their trips. Even if one doesn’t have the opportunity to go abroad, blogs could be used, of course, but one would have to consider how to design authentic tasks. Informing tourists about one's hometown in the target language might be one suggestion. Other ideas?
posted by Therese at 3:53 pm
5 Comments:
Two examples of existing blogs for language teachers that I think do a good job. Read these and follow the links and you'll find a wealth of information and ideas:
Joe Dale, Nodehill Middle School, Isle of Wight. Joe manages his own blog site entitled "Integrating ICT into the Modern Foreign Languages Classroom" at http://joedale.typepad.com. This covers a variety of topics relating to the teaching of foreign languages, especially blogging, podcasting and using interactive whiteboards. See also Joe Dale's ICT blog at the Times Educational Supplement website: http://www.tes.co.uk/blogs/
Modern Foreign Languages Environment Blog: A weblog based at the Learning and Teaching Scotland website, providing the latest news on Modern Foreign Languages and a facility for readers to add their own comments: http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/cs/blogs/mfle/
Her are some of the suggestions that I put together in Section 12 of Module 1.5 at the ICT for Language Teachers website (http://www.ict4lt.org):
More recently, weblogs - or blogs for short - have begun to appear. These behave in similar ways to discussion lists, except that they often take the form of a journal or a collection of an individual's or group's ideas and thoughts, and they offer an easy facility for uploading new material to the Web. Increasing use is being made of blogs in education. Educational uses of blogs include:
Journals of school excursions. If the excursion takes place abroad and one of its purposes is to learn a foreign language language, then the students may be encouraged to put together an electronic "scrapbook" in the foreign language, including texts that they have written and photographs and audio/video recordings.
Online courses in which the teacher sets the tasks and receives the coursework from the students. These may be "open" courses and viewable by the public or "closed" courses aimed at a specific group of students. "Open" blogs can motivate students, encouraging them to improve their writing style due to the presence of other viewers. Such blogs may include Internet resources specified by the teacher and day-by-day records of what the students have learned.
Webquests.
Teacher training materials and hints and tips on using new technologies in the classroom.
School and college newsletters.
I consider blogs one of the most interesting tools that have "recently" appeared on the Internet and I'd love to hear how other teachers use them in the classroom, yet I believe that their pedagogical uses are a bit limited (please don't burn me at the stake for my heretic opinions!!! :-) I can't think of new possibilities for using a blog in the classroom than as diaries or journals.
I think it's important to keep in mind that blogs can be used for pretty much whatever you want - it's a format for easy web publishing, but type of content is not fixed. I hope someone will pick up on your challenging comment, Pilar :-) .
I've noticed that most of the discussion focusing around blogs and podcasts appears to assume that it is the teacher who creates the content and presents it to the learners. If you chase up my references (which I've mentioned a couple of times in this blog and in the wiki) to the blogs produced by Joe Dale, Mark Pentleton and Ewan McIntosh - see below)you'll find that they talk about the learners creating the content. Thus blogs and podcasts become highly motivating authoring tools for the learners, who make that little extra effort when they know that their written or recorded work will be published and available for the whole world to see. Here are the relevant URLS again:
http://joedale.typepad.com/
http://www.pie.org.uk/
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/cs/blogs/mfle/
BTW, I use my own list of favourite websites to chase up these references, and also the resources at the ICT for Language Teachers website. Here are the relevant URLs:
My Favuorite Websites:
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/cs/blogs/mfle/
ICT for Language Teachers:
http://www.ict4lt.org
Sorry - wrong URL for my Favourite Websites. I must learn how to copy and paste properly! Here it is:
Favourite Websites:
http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/websites.htm
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