Blog, as an innovative product of internet culture, serves as platform
for everyone to express ideas and thoughts; the blog culture stimulates people’s
desire for knowledge. For it is open and has a variety of features, there are
many possibilities to engage blog in language education use.
We can put reading resources and relative links on blogs and have our
students post feedback on their own blog or comment on what they interest most.
Due to the development of mobile devices, we can easily access blog everywhere;
inside or outside school, students and teachers can share what they hear and
see whenever a spark jumps out of mind. By reading others’ posts, one may
follow the posters’ mind and get the knowledge from others; while the posters
get satisfaction feeling being one of knowledge discriminators. Thus, blog
provide a bridge of positive communication between teachers and students and
even build a study network within students themselves.
Blog can also be used as a multimedia resource index. As mentioned
above, we can put reading materials on blog. More than that, thanks to technology,
we can have multimedia tools on blogs to share with our students. For example,
for a student who is writing linguistic paper, we may introduce him how to type IPA symbols in the blog. We may
also categorize our blogs for students so they can search information easily. Generally,
we can use blog as a specific library that accumulates what we've studied. It can
be useful for a teacher to improve his teaching as well.
What do you think? I’d like to hear your comments. Here are some official
learning standards that meet my ideas:
COMMUNICATION
COMMUNICATE IN LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH
- Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions
- Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.
PARTICIPATE IN MULTILINGUAL COMMUNITIES AT
HOME & AROUND THE WORLD
- Standard 5.1: Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting
- Standard 5.2: Students show
evidence of becoming life-long learners by using the language for personal
enjoyment and enrichment.
Hi Nick,
ReplyDeleteI liked how you mentioned the accessibility of the blog via smart phones. I think that brings up a pretty good point about the usefulness of blogging for students learning another language. Now a student can log on and participate in a language environment wherever they are as long as they have a smart phone. We spend a lot of time on the phone as is, by setting up an English blog students can express themselves right then in the moment.
Blogging which includes learning resources and interpersonal communication are excellent examples of how blogs and be used for language learning.
ReplyDeleteNick, I like your idea of using a blog as a study network for students. They can communicate with one another and with the teacher from home if they have questions about assignments or upcoming exams.
ReplyDeleteNick, I agree with Jasmine. I like your idea of a blog as a network for students. It can form a community in and out of school and provide spaces for students to ask questions that they may not have thought of in class. I also like the idea of a blog being an extension of the classroom in introducing new material.
ReplyDelete