Blogging and Microblogging

Blogging and Microblogging

   Today’s topic for discussion is blogging and microblogging. It was important to find out for me whether it is worth using those Web tools in my EFL classroom or not.  I think that this is very arguable because every teacher has his own perceptions and methods of using them.

Will Richardson reflects about this topic in his “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other powerful Web tools for Classrooms” book. According to him, Weblogs brought revolution in journalism. People could share their ideas, perceptions and even corrections under the article posted on the internet thus helping the authors to make them more readable and proper to readers’ needs.

As for using blogs as a teaching tool, Richardson mentions that “Giving students their own Weblogs can change much about the traditional classroom”.

First of all, students get rid of papers and just post their work online waiting for peer and teacher feedback. I think that this is a great idea because not only students but also sometimes teachers are lost in papers. This problem vanishes in case of blogging.

Second, it’s easier for students to reflect one homework after another and then to see their progress.

Third, reading and being read by peers and teacher, commenting and being commented leads to development of their skills more and more.

I mostly liked Richardson’s idea about students’ having blogs from starting school until finishing it. This will be a personal work data throughout the years and can be used for student’s future career too. I understand that this is very responsible and hard work to keep having and reflecting blogs in Armenia but if I teach at school I would like try this out with my students because this will be interesting not only for me and people who will be reading their blogs, but also for students themselves because years will pass and they will be able to go back and read their thoughts that might have already changed during the years.

Although blogging will ease both Armenian students’ and teachers’ work, I am also concerned about something that Richardson mentions as a disadvantage of using blogs in the classroom. That is the threat of having a lot of unfiltered inappropriate info that will come along with useful one. In this case I think the CIPA will not help because we do not have special filtering programs that are used in Armenian schools.

So while surfing the Net here students may quite often face this problem. I think in this case Armenian teachers should concern one of the two suggested solutions by Richardson, which is to inform and teach the students how to prevent viewing inappropriate files or pages and act correctly in case of their appearance.

Being totally new teaching tool in Armenia (I don’t think that any Armenian teacher uses them in their classrooms) blogs may bring a revolution into Armenian EFL classrooms and I will be happy to be one of the first teachers to implement this Web tool in my classroom because I think that it will help a lot my students not only to improve their writing skills but also to become more sociable expressing their ideas freely (which I think Armenian students need to improve the most).

As for microblogging, I don’t think that it is a good idea to use them while teaching because in comparison with blogs there can be fewer or no info to learn for students. I think that microblogs like Twitter or Facebook are totally good to use to communicate but obviously outside the classroom and class time. 

Here are some ways how I would use the blogs and twitter in an EFL classroom.

• My students should be at pre-intermefiate proficiency level, age:16-18, location: EFL classroom with the internet connection and limited access to the internet sources.
• In order to introduce my students blogging and twitter first of all I will create one sample account for me  in order for them to see how it is done. Secondly, I will write the instructions step by step, and finally, I will provide a video tutorial for them as an additional help.
• For blogging I will suggest from 2-3 topics we have covered on which the students will reflect on. As for twitter I will ask a specific question that was arguable in the class and  based on their opinion,  they will answer in their twitter account.
• I will check  the chronological   order, spelling and grammar.
• spelling and grammar are things that are needed to be corrected but in case of blogs the T should not give feedback in public just commenting under the post  but s/he should send a private message to the student giving comments about his mistakes.