Why use blogs or Wikis?
1. to give students a chance to express themselves in English to each other / the teacher/ another class/ an online audience
2. to provide students with extra-class support such as details of/ links to class work and homework
3. to provide students with some additional online tasks to do in or out of class
4. as a means of internal communication amongst colleagues – e.g. sharing INSETT sessions/ interesting articles
Which should I use - Blog or Wiki?
Use a Blog to send out information and attract reactions to it in the form of comments. A "tutor" blog in which the teacher gives extra support to students is a good example of this. See The Rome EFL Blog.
Use a Wiki to encourage collaborative writing, in which a single text can be edited by many people. The teacher can intervene at any stage in the process. See "English for Engineering, Kuwait University", by Buthaina Al-Othman. Choose 'English 123 Spring 2008' in the left-hand column.
Another example, using the 'PbWiki' site at Princeton, is the Book Lovers’ Wiki.
There is some overlap. A Blog 'owner', like a Wiki 'owner', can invite people to become editors and thus add and edit posts (you're reading a post now) instead of merely adding comments. A good example is The British Council Hub, created by Mark Appleby at the British Council Porto.
Fora (forums)
These are more like online notice boards in which messages are organised into threads, with replies displayed in proximity to the original message. All posts in a thread can be visible at once. An example is Mark Appleby’s Hub Forum in Porto. Another example is The Friday Blog, a forum set uplastautumn by a student of mine, Francesca, which has been used to post writing assignments, with the chance of peer reviews by other students.
General features
You should be able to regulate access to a Wiki, Forum or Blog in various ways. You can decide who can edit or create posts, and who can add comments. You can decide whether the blog or Wiki is visible to the public or not, and whether it can be listed by search engines.
Choose the type of site you want to use, and go to its home page:
Blogger: http://www.blogger.com
Wordpress: http://wordpress.com/
Classpress: http://www.classpress.com/
Wikispaces: http://www.wikispaces.com/
Pbwiki: http://pbwiki.com/
Lefora: http://www.lefora.com/
Some examples of how Blogs are being used in the British Council:
http://fcemasterclass.blogspot.com
http://web.mac.com/colin.hoy/UI2b/welcome.html
In Porto:
http://studentzone.blogspot.com
In Bilbao, Spain:
http://weseeandenjoy.blogspot.com/
http://lovingbilbao.blogspot.com/
http://fcebritishcouncilbilbao.blogspot.com/
In Barcelona, Spain:
http://encouraginglearnerautonomy.blogspot.com/
I hope all this helps. More for you very soon. Do write a Comment with your reaction.
- Mike
2 comments:
Thanks, Michael for sharing the summary of your training session. I agree with you on what you mentioned regarding blogs, wikis, and forums as useful tools to support creating online communities of learners among our students.
I’d also like to add the following few points or reasons to your list of reasons to use blogs or wikis for our classes:
1. to motivate students to use English (especially, authentic English) and learn naturally or informally outside the classroom walls. This can help learners improve their reading and writing skills and increase self- confidence.
2. to add fun to their learning process and encourage them to become explorers / discoverers of new knowledge, an essential attitude needed for the 21century learners / students.
3. to meet authentic audience from other cultures and make new friends to exchange cultural knowledge that should support promoting peace inside our classrooms and the world in general..
Moreover, students can create their own blogs or group-blogs to post their writing assignments or commenting on an article as you mentioned. Aside from the academic benefits, (like improving their writing and reading skills) this kind of activity makes students feel proud of themselves and confident as they do have web-presence and can enjoy a sense of ownership that should encourage them to become productive users of the Internet and not only consumers!
Also, these Web 2.0 technologies, including blogs and wikis can support teaching and motivate teachers to become creative or more creative adding fun and interest to the teaching and learning processes. Online Forums or Groups, like Yahoo Groups or Google groups are also wonderful tools through which learners can connect to improve communication and interaction that should make life much better and easier to all learners, including teachers.
Thanks, again Michael for providing such a discussion, which is a great opportunity for all of us to share and learn, together.
Best wishes!
Hi Buthaina!
Thank you very much indeed for these highly useful observations. I especially like the idea of putting students in touch with other cultures. Although this takes a lot of time and hard work, it's well worth doing.
I hope we can put some of these ideas into practice over the coming year.
Mike
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