Blogs

Bloging: Embrace the new culture

Blogs or Web Logs have been around for a few years. But ever thought this online tool would ever be used for educational purposes, especially language Learning??? Well..Well..Well!! ICT never fails to surprise us with enumerable uses of itself!

Blogging has become a 'culture' in itself and now enjoys a high status in the field of language learning and teaching. In the age where everything is 'instant', technology has surpassed the formal written communication through pen and paper as most of it takes place either through text messages, chats, emails etc. Therefore, to address the need of the hour, it is important for teachers to make their students move beyond their notebooks and use the web for practicing writing skills.

Blogs are easy to set up and use. The teacher can make use of blogging in several ways to make the students practice writing skills. The teacher can either have individual blogs set up by the students where they carry out written tasks, weekly viewed and assessed by the teacher, or create a class blog, where all students of a class can contribute to a particular task and have peers assess or comment on each others contribution. Blogs foster high order thinking skills. The students practice and frame their piece of writing a number of times before publishing it on their blog. Since they know their contribution will be viewed by peers, they make efforts to produce high quality work through the use of expressions, vocabulary, etc. The process of reading peer's contribution or blog and commenting on it generates collaboration which helps in exchange of views, ideas and thoughts. 

Blogging also opens the horizons of the students as it helps people to connect not only from same class, school or city, but also from different countries, nationalities, beliefs, etc.

With enumerable advantages of blogging, one cannot ignore the fact that only those students can make use of this tool who have an access to computer and internet. Those students who do not, resort to the old style of pen and paper.

Since, google is a famous website, its blogging website called 'Blogger' is commonly used by bloggers using their gmail or google+ id and password. The creative element allows the bloggers to create and design their blog according to their likes and taste. 

Russell Stannard's tutorial can help you learn and use blogger with your students: