2013 Three Rivers TESOL Conference

Entisar Elsherif Indiana University of

Pennsylvania

BLOGS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER

EDUCATION PROGRAMS

OUTLINE

•What’s a blog?

• Blogging as a new writing • genre

• Blogs in the classroom

• Blogs in Teacher Education Programs

A “brief, discrete hunks of information called posts.

These posts are arranged in reverse-chronological

order (the most recent posts come first).”

(Doctorow et al, 2002, p.1)

What’s a blog?

Blogging as a new writing genre

Blog are new captivating writing genres:

• They are “a composite of several genres, a

blend of forms familiar to most of us” The text involves many parts that might constitute parts that could be a conversation, a narrative, a letter, or a newspaper article. Blogs perform “diligently and reliably in whatever type of writing the blogger undertakes”

(Penrod, 2007, p.44)

• Blogs are changing literacy to become multimodal. They not only contain the written text, but also include images, sounds, graphics, videos, podcasts, and links to other websites.

• Blogging also provides marginalized learners a platform to come out of their isolation and express themselves.

Blogging as a new writing genre

Blogging as a new writing genre changes literacy to become multimodal.

Blogs improve critical thinking ,writing fluency and social skills .

Blogging helps marginalized learners to become part of learners community .

It creates motivating environment.

Blogging develops the ethics and process of responding to and interacting with others .

It helps in growing the habit of searching the internet for information that related to their topics .

Advantages of using blogs

Blogs in the classroom

SafetyRaising learners’ awareness towards issues of internet safety, such as educating learners and showing them the consequences of cyber-bullying.

Privacy

Teachers might set up private blogs, divide the assignments into two types: in-class assignments and blogs assignments, ask students to use pseudonyms, provide instruction on how to give suitable constructive feedback, divide students into peers that read each other’s blog entries before posting and set up the blog entries to not to be published until they are approved by the teacher.

Integrity & Ethical Conduct

Create classroom ethics by writing a code of ethics that “can provide a system for handling concerns as they arise”

The availability of sources itself helps learners to learn that by linking these sources directly to their blogs they “cut down on plagiarism, since the original source can be easily reached”

Blogs in Teacher Education Programs

•Blogs can potentially enhance pre-service teachers’ reflective practices

and help them make a better connection between theory and practice.”

•Taking into consideration “both instructor’s and pre-service teachers’

prior experiences with blogs, their practices, and their representations

and convictions.”

(Bangou, 2011)

Tutor Blog

Teacher educators post short blog entries and links that might help student teachers

Learner Blog

Teacher Educators either divide the class into small groups where each group runs a blog or ask each student teacher to run a blog individually. It is suitable for reading and writing.

Class Blog

Class blogs involve student teachers in collaborative work because they are run by the whole class. This type of blogs can be used in conversation-based classes, project-based language learning, international classroom language exchange, and as knowledge management software.

The types of blog assignments range from:

• just a blog that compiles students written reflections

• to other varied types of blogs such as

research blog,

technology autobiography blog,

word-of- the- day blog,

reading journal blog,

grammar blog,

and literature reflections blog.

• choice and range of blogs depend on the students’ level and the objectives of

integrating blogs into the classroom.

• For a writing teacher, blogs can be used as prewriting tools. This prewriting

blog provides the learners to learn the process of writing by practicing and in

the same time learners compile this process in their blog where they can visit

whenever they needed.

•Use of blogs as a reflective platform: use of blogs as a platform to critically reflect on their learning processes as well as to gauge the impact of blogs on their own.

•professional growth.

•use as a discussion forum so that the student teachers could engage in and examine their own reflection process: student teachers will actively discuss teaching theories and their implications through blogs.

•A useful platform for communicating with each other .

•Blogs can stimulate reading and motivate learning.

Conclusion• blogs can be motivating for

future teachers and enable them to have the ability to express themselves and become willing to present their thoughts and have their own voice.

• Blogs give them the chance to reflect on their teaching and follow their professional progress.

• The pitfalls of using blogs should not discourage teacher educators from integrating them into the English classroom and Teacher Education programs. With some focused instruction, student teachers will be motivated to blogging and this will enhance their language proficiency, especially reading and writing, as well as their teaching practice.