Blogs, wikis and podcasts

1.Social software

2.Blogs in language teaching

3.How to start using blogs with learners

4.Wikis in language teaching

5.How to start using a wiki with learners

6.Podcasts in language teaching

Social software

Blogs, wikis and podcasts are all examples of social software, computer tools which allow people to connect, to communicate and to collaborate online. A blog is essentially a web page with regular diary or journal entries. The term is short for web log. A wild is a collaborative web space, consisting of a number of pages that can be edited by any user. The term comes from the Hawaiian word for 'quick'. A podcast is an audio and/or video file that is 'broadcast' via the Internet and can be downloaded to a computer or mobile device such as an MP3 player for listening/viewing. The word podcast comes from combining iPod and broadcast, iPod being the brand name for the Apple portable MP3 player. Although these three tools are different, we are grouping them together in this chapter as they have certain features in common when applied to the classroom:

• They can be set up and used by teachers and/or learners.

• They can be used to connect learners to other communities of learners, for example to a class in another country.

• The ideas and content can be generated and created by learners, either individually or collaboratively.

Although the use of ICT tools such as blogs, wikis and podcasts can be very motivating for learners, teachers are themselves sometimes fearful of the technology, or feel that they are not technically competent enough to use these tools. However, as we will see, all of these tools are easy to set up and use, with no specialist technical knowledge required.

Another common misgiving is one related to content, and the lack of control that a teacher may feel about allowing learners to generate and create their own content. Teachers may find themselves thinking: 'Will the content be appropriate? Will the language used by my learners be good enough?' In fact, these tools engender a sense of social responsibility, with learners working collaboratively on content. Also, the public nature of the content created using these Internet tools ensures that accuracy and appropriacy become more important to learners.

Blogs in language teaching

The most common type of blog is kept by one person, who will regularly post comments, thoughts, analyses, experiences of daily life, interesting links, jokes or any other form of content, to a web page. Blogs may consist of written text only, or they may include pictures or photos - photoblogs - or even audio and video.

Most blogs will allow readers to comment on blog entries, thereby creating an online community around a common topic, interest or person. We can thus see why blogs are referred to as social software, as they set up informal grassroots links between blogs and writers/readers of blogs. Blogs will sometimes include a blogroll, or list of links to other blogs which the blog writer admires, thereby widening the online community of blog writers and readers.

On the next page is a class blog with entries from students studying at a college in the USA. The blog was set up as part of an international exchange of infomation with students in other countries. Blogs used in education are known as edublogs. Edublogs cover a wide range of topics related to education, from musings on educational policy and developments to learner compositions.

An edublog can be set up and used by a teacher, by individual learners or by a class. A teacher may decide to use a blog to provide their learners with news and comments on issues, extra reading practice or homework, online links, a summary of a class for learners who were unable to attend, study tips, and so on. In this case, learners will access and read, and possibly add comments to, the blog outside the classroom. A blog set up and maintained by a teacher is known as a tutor blog. The teacher may decide to allow their learners to write comments in the blog. The one on page 89 (top) is an example of a tutor blog set up by a teacher in Argentina for her Cambridge First Certificate Examination preparation class. In the blog she provides study tips, reviews class work and provides extra links on specific topics such as pronunciation.

A teacher may encourage their learners to each set up and maintain their own individual blogs. These are known as student blogs. Learners can be asked to post to their blogs once or twice a week, or however often the teacher judges convenient, and content can range from comments on current affairs to descriptions of daily activities. Other learners, from the same class, from other classes or even from classes in other countries, can be encouraged to post comments and reactions to student blog postings. The one on page 89 (bottom) is an example of a student blog set up by a learner in Brazil. Student blogs lend themselves well to teacher training and development, too. A trainee teacher, for example, can be encouraged to reflect on what they are learning, or on classes that they are teaching, by means of a reflective blog.

The third type of blog is the class blog, one used by an entire class. Again, this blog can be used to post comments on certain topics, or on class work or on any other issue the teacher thinks interesting and relevant to learners. In a class blog learners all post to the same blog. Here are examples of some ways in which you can use blogs with your learners. All of these blogs could include photos, which can be taken by learners themselves, or off the Internet from free photo-sharing or clip-art sites such as Flickr (www.flickr.com).

There are some obvious advantages to using blogs in the classroom. They provide a 'real-world' tool for learners with which to practise their written English, as well as a way of contacting learners from other parts of the world if the blog is used as part of an international exchange. Even if a student or class blog is not shared with learners in other parts of the world, a blog is publicly available on the Internet. In theory anyone can read the blog, although only invited members can be given permission to add comments.

One of the issues to bear in mind when setting up student or class blogs is that of correction - how much help are learners given with their written work? Learners tend to want their written work in a blog to be as accurate as possible, given that the blog is publicly accessible, and the teacher needs to be prepared to give learners plenty of time for writing, reviewing, redrafting and checking postings before they are added to the blog. Asking learners to prepare blog entries in a word processing program, beforehand, and encouraging peer review of work in progress, for example in pairs, can help with this process.

A further area to consider is assessment. Given that a student or class blog is essentially a written assignment, blog postings can be used for evaluation. If the teacher intends to evaluate blog entries as part of a writing assessment, as with any written work the criteria for evaluation need to be made clear to learners in advance. Criteria will probably include those used to evaluate more traditional, paper-based forms of writing, such as accuracy, fluency, coherence and relevance, but they may also include criteria related to the visual nature of this electronic medium, such as the effective use of visuals, or visual presentation overall, and other areas like the length of postings and awareness of audience.

How to start using blogs with learners

A simple blogs project that you can use with learners of all levels is to get your students to set up their own student blogs, writing about themselves, their interests, family, home, country, and so on, and including some photos.

Step 1 - Setting up a sample blog (1-2 hours)

At home before class set up your own blog, including information about yourself similar to what you would like your learners to produce. Doing this has several advantages:

• It allows you to become familiar with the blog interface and how it works.

• It shows your learners what a blog is.

• It provides a model for your students' blogs in terms of: content - what the learners can write about; language - the level of language expected; and look - for example, the blog could include photos.

Step 2 - Setting up student blogs (1 hour)

Once you have shown your learners your sample blog, for which you could prepare some comprehension questions to help them understand the content, take them to your computer room, and help learners to set up their own blogs. If there are the facilities for one computer per learner, each learner can set up their own blog. If learners need to work in pairs or small groups around one computer terminal, one blog can be set up per pair/group. In the case of the single computer classroom, the teacher can set up a single blog for the entire class, with multiple users accessing it outside of class time.

Note that helping learners to set up their own blogs can be quite labour intensive! You will find yourself answering questions from learners who are all at various stages of the set­up process, so if possible it is always a good idea to put learners into pairs or small groups to set up their blogs, with one more tech-sawy learner per group to help out. Expect to spend one entire class on helping learners with the mechanics of setting up their blogs.

If you have the facilities to project a computer screen from a laptop connected to a data projector or an interactive whiteboard, you can take learners through the blog set-up process step by step on the screen, while they work on their computers.

Step 3 - Posting to and visiting blogs (1 hour)

When learners have set up their own, pair or small-group blogs, they are ready to spend some time on preparing and posting content. Once the student blogs contain several postings and photos, encourage them to share their blog addresses and to visit each other's blogs and to post comments, or in the case of a single blog with multiple posts, encourage them to comment on each other's posts in the same blog.

Step 4 - Follow-up (2-3 hours or several lessons)

Both teacher and learners will have spent some time on learning to use blogs, and on posting their initial blog entries, so it is well worth carrying on using the blogs for more than a couple of classes. Learners can be encouraged to post regularly over a certain period of time, for example, a term or a semester, with the teacher providing ideas and suggestions for content. The blogs can be kept as an internal class project, or other classes can be encouraged to visit and to comment on the blogs. Teachers can even join an international network of teachers

(see Chapter 11) and get learners from other countries to visit and to comment on the student blogs. Blogs can be set so that only invited members have commenting privileges, which gives the blog some measure of security. This will be particularly important if you are working with younger learners.

Note that it is normal for blogs to have a limited lifespan. Only 50 percent of blogs are estimated to be active three months after being set up. Blog fatigue, or blogfade, will set in, so it is often a good idea for the teacher to have a clear time frame in mind for a blog project, such as a term or semester or a couple of months. If learners' interest doesn't flag after this time, the blogs can always be continued! You may want to experiment with using blogs for different purposes with the same classes.

How to set up a blog

There are a number of free blog sites available on the Internet. These include:

• Blogger (http://www.blogger.com)

• WordPress (http://wordpress.org)

• EzBlogWorld (http://www.ezblogworld.com/)

• Bahraich Blogs (http://www.bahraichblogs.com/)

Getablog (http://www.getablog.net/portal3.php) Below is the start-up page for creating your own blog in Blogger. The blog pages freely available on the Internet tend to be very user-friendly, and setting up your own blog is usually a straightforward process, with no specialist technical knowledge or expertise needed. You simply visit the homepage of the blog and follow the instructions.

Audio and video blogs

To be able to create an audio or video blog, you need access to audio or video equipment, as well as editing software and sufficient space on a web server to store the multimedia files. Audio equipment will include a headset with microphone, and video equipment a digital video camera or webcam, although webcam images tend to be of poorer quality overall.

For audio blogging, Audacity is software which is easy to use (http://audacity. sourceforge.net/). Also take a look at Audioblog (http://www.audioblog.com/) for more details, while for video files you may want to look at Freevlog (http://freevlog.org/). Bear in mind that while the concept of multimedia blogs is not overly complicated, you will need some time to acquire the necessary skills, and this may also impact on your classroom time if you are planning to do this kind of project with your learners. You will need to spend a little time training them, too. If, for example, you want to try adding audio to your blogs, you will first need to teach yourself to use audio editing software such as Audacity, and then teach your students to use it, so they can record themselves. Below is an example of a video blog, or vlog, made by a teacher living in Japan, in which he comments on his daily life.

Date: 2014-12-22; view: 1340