blog as a tool for teaching and learning?

Hi all
I wonder if you have emerging reflections on blogs as a specific tool.

How might this tool fit into a language learning context?
What are the pros and cons?
Can you relate these to specific attributes? eg it's synchronous; its content displays in a specific way; collaborators interact in specific ways (different from a wiki for example).

This week I enccouraged you to think about synchronous communication in relation to SLA principles. Does blog communication have any such potential?

Look forward to any thoughts you might have no matter how small:-)

Diane

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Although easy to use, you can check out instructions on Anne Foreman's blog on encouraging autonomy - worth browsing beyond this entry too! Another tool that can she provides instruction about is Animoto

Blogging into CMC

You'll see that this blog was the locus of activity during latter weeks of the on campus ecuc7006 course in semester 1 this year. We only used it as a focus of attention during that period but I would like to resurrect this space for some discussion as we move into this part of the distance course.
Browse the various links that you see here and contribute as ideas occur to you. If Web 2.o is a new concept to you, you might take a look at the Youtube clips (one embedded into a post to illustrate that, and others on the video link tool).
To be able to add resources and play with the interface yourselves, I need to add you as authors. To do this, I need you to have registered for a google account, and let me know the address that you use for that. Post your addresses in the Blackboard forum.
best
Diane

Web 2.0

Using a blog to manage video tasks: observation task

Watch this clip very carefully! Then click on the Comments link. Try to answer the questions with your partner.

Wallace and Gromit

Play the clip again when you think you're answered as many questions as you can.

Embedding video clips

You will see that I have embedded clips from YouTube in some of the postings rather than linked to the source page. This displays the clip on your blog page.

To do this, when you find a clip, you will find to the right of your screen both the URL and the embed code. Copy the embed code and paste into your message. In this way you can provide links to clips and tasks for your learners within messages.

CMC

For me the main benefit of CMC is that it allows a lesson, or a group, to continue outside the rigid confines of the lesson. 

One of the difficulties is that unless students are involved and interested in the content of the communication they will not continue: communication for its own sake is not enough. I think it is relevant that all the email / discussion possibilities in Blackboard on our course have rarely been used. I did send one email to everyone but didn't receive any replies so I haven't bothered since. In a classroom the students are in front of you - cannot easily leave - and can be instructed to "communicate." If students are going to give up their free time, voluntarily, the purpose must be useful and the process must be interesting.

There is a tendency for new devices and tasks to be popular for a short time before falling rapidly into disuse. It can often seem exciting to the teacher because the technology gives us the ability to do things in a different way and to create highly polished material. The students, after a short burst of enthusiasm, may be less impressed. I can understand this. 

Also, if I were a refugee in this country and needed to learn English to function here I think I would ask you to help me learn English, please - computer skills can wait, thank-you. On the other hand, many students have existing computer skills which can be used to aid their learning.

Areas which anecdotally seem to involve and motivate students are those which allow students to review material that may be useful to them over a period of time (eg essay plans / help for IELTS), and material which uses audio / video in a way that is impossible with a book. I know that Simon has experimented with both these areas.

I use very simple techniques to share audio files with my students so that they can do spelling tests / dictations at home, check their results, and then try again later. 

I believe that one way of looking at the internet and its possibilities is as a variation of a classroom, rather than as a variation of a coursebook. Some Universities (MIT) for example, make all their material freely available online - the equivalent of Manchester University allowing anyone to access the Blackboard system without paying a fee! This is clearly a fantastic resourse for students, but when I looked at the Spanish course each module had only approximately 4 hours of video. This is a small fraction of the amount of teacher talking time in a classroom, and is, I think, a legacy of the days when video was mainly distributed by CD.

Now there is virtually no limit to the amount of video that can be uploading and distance students could have the option of nearly as much "teacher time" as on-site students. The communication can be synchronous or not, but the feel of the communication can be live or near-live as it is called in broadcasting. I feel that this is a promising line of development, and certainly it is one that interests me a lot.

Sites like www.wiziq.com are making this easily available, with up to 500 students in a virtual real time lecture theatre. (I've joined the site but have never tried giving a class using the site - but I am going to!)

Anyway, these are just some of my thoughts. Unfortunately I won't be there tomorrow as I have to teach every morning this week - the old-fashioned way. Have a good lesson.

Paul

How to use a blog?

I don't believe it is possible to make an a priori decision about the uses of a blog for a particular group of students. Testing it in practice is likely to produce different results with different students. I say this from experience. I use an online class journal with one group of students: this is not technically a blog (and is in fact based around google documents) but it shares many salient features with a blog. About half the class really enjoy it and find it a useful way of extending their use of English outside the classroom, a quarter occasionally use it, and a quarter more or less don't bother - or require firm prompting. For me this is neither surprising nor disappointing. Next term I will continue with the experiment. I am trying to test different ways of giving feedback - either commenting only on the content, or including comments on their language. 

Synchronous communication

Hi everyone
I just read the transcripts of the conversations which Diane asked us to look at and it was interesting to see how much language was generated. I think it's noticeable how topics are broached and dropped quickly if the other person doesn't react - like, in the second one, the NS's comment about 'David Beckham and his wife and the other woman'. The NNS either didn't know about or wasn't interested in DB's life outside football :) so the conversation just flowed on without interruption really. I find that too when I'm on MSN with my friends and family - topics get raised and dropped much more subtly than in conversation when it would be quite rude to ignore someone's remark or question.
My other feeling was that I don't like reading through the transcripts really. I'm not sure why but I think it has something to do with the fact that conversations like that don't seem DESIGNED for reading and it feels embarrassing that your rapidly written fragments of conversation are then thrust in front of your nose to see how silly they sounded.... I'm happy to enter the language complete with typos and false starts if I think it's just going to be quickly read and then the other person will move straight on - I think if I knew there would be a transcript produced for later scrutiny it would inhibit me very much from entering into the spirit of the thing. Hope that makes sense.
Julia

Learning Resources for children

Hi everybody,

I do agree with Aga that the idea of CMC is really interesting and challenging, and I will for sure use it with my students when I come back to Indonesia in the future. I do believe that my students will love the idea of learning English mediated by computer. I have totally different students from Aga, my students have been very much familiar with the computer and internet, so e-mail, blogs, facebook, and chat room have been a part of their day to day life, and probably they use them more often than I do. So, it think it will be really exciting and challenging to try this with my students.

By the way, since last week, I have been thinking of what to post in this blog, and as I see what other people have posted, I am so amazed that many interesting things have been posted here and I get more in doubt about what to post here. After thinking for sometime, I remember that there is a website, connected to onestopenglish.com, containing free resources for children including songs, games and flashcard, some links to other sites with tales, stories, and also articles. I used to use this website a lot to find materials for Children for my husband's English School and some articles for my work.

the link is
http://www.the-bus-stop.net

I don't know how to make the hyperlink ;-) so I just write the address. Hopefully it will work.