The Benefits of blogs for L2 teaching and learning
To teach students in 21st century, it is important for teachers to empower you students through teaching them how to be good digital citizens. In a school whose culture is very supportive and encouraging to technology use in classrooms, students will have much more opportunities to see a bigger outside world and study more efficiently. I used to take blogs as places where only for people to share their personal lives, but I recently found blogs also serve as places for learning and community building when I used the blogs on my graduate school website, UB learns for study purpose first time. My classmates and I shared our thoughts and idea there, and blogs became tools of helping us build a supportive and resourceful community because we communicated a lot there. It had significant influence on my professional development because I have learned so many things from others' teaching experience. I definitely will continue to use blogs in the future. When I have questions, I can post them and others' comments may give me some ideas. When I am looking for a resource, I can see what resources other teachers have and I can borrow them. Sharing is mutual in blogs, others can also benefit from my blogs if I insist on posting entries about my teaching approaches.
For me, blogs can be used in various methods by my students. In my future teaching, I may choose blogs as platforms to showcase my students' work. If you set up a gallery walk in school, only people school wide can see and appreciate their work, while students' work can be viewed by all over the world if they are posted in blogs. When there is more audience, students will treat their work more seriously and contribute more effort to complete it. It reminds me that blogs can also be a part of students' portfolios which can be kept permanently.
Students' blogs can also be a method of demonstrating their performance to see if they meet the learning standards. Both of communicative skills and cultural understanding can be checked through blogging. I am teaching students Chinese as a second language, and students' level are at checkpoint A (beginning) and checkpoint B (intermediate). When I got to know more and more about the benefits of blogs in teaching and learning, I think blogging can be very efficient tool for students at checkpoint B to demonstrate their study. For example, as LOTE.ML.2.1.B.A states: students can exhibit more comprehensive knowledge of cultural traits and patterns. After acquiring the knowledge about the cultural products and practice of China from me, they can do more research and post an entry in blogs to introduce the culture, for example, blogs about Chinese New Year. If a student can write a blog about the culture comprehensively, and it can prove he/she already meets the standards of cultural understanding. In addition, peers can browse and comment on others' blogs to have a broader vision of the culture.
Students can not only demonstrate writing there but also reading to prove their communicative skills. In LOTE.ML.1.2.B.A, students can read and comprehend materials written for native speakers when the topic and language are familiar. Since it is easy to find blogs in any language, blogs in Chinese can be very good reading materials to check if they can comprehend the blogs written for native speakers and whether they achieve the LOTE standards. Besides this, Learning Standards for Language Other Than English, students are also expected to achieve the standards of speaking and listening. Blogs then can be good places where they can upload their voice messages and videos with some words explanations, and they can interact with peers and demonstrate their speaking and listening skills here.
Teachers, don't hesitate to try using blogging for your teaching and own professional development!
For me, blogs can be used in various methods by my students. In my future teaching, I may choose blogs as platforms to showcase my students' work. If you set up a gallery walk in school, only people school wide can see and appreciate their work, while students' work can be viewed by all over the world if they are posted in blogs. When there is more audience, students will treat their work more seriously and contribute more effort to complete it. It reminds me that blogs can also be a part of students' portfolios which can be kept permanently.
Students' blogs can also be a method of demonstrating their performance to see if they meet the learning standards. Both of communicative skills and cultural understanding can be checked through blogging. I am teaching students Chinese as a second language, and students' level are at checkpoint A (beginning) and checkpoint B (intermediate). When I got to know more and more about the benefits of blogs in teaching and learning, I think blogging can be very efficient tool for students at checkpoint B to demonstrate their study. For example, as LOTE.ML.2.1.B.A states: students can exhibit more comprehensive knowledge of cultural traits and patterns. After acquiring the knowledge about the cultural products and practice of China from me, they can do more research and post an entry in blogs to introduce the culture, for example, blogs about Chinese New Year. If a student can write a blog about the culture comprehensively, and it can prove he/she already meets the standards of cultural understanding. In addition, peers can browse and comment on others' blogs to have a broader vision of the culture.
Students can not only demonstrate writing there but also reading to prove their communicative skills. In LOTE.ML.1.2.B.A, students can read and comprehend materials written for native speakers when the topic and language are familiar. Since it is easy to find blogs in any language, blogs in Chinese can be very good reading materials to check if they can comprehend the blogs written for native speakers and whether they achieve the LOTE standards. Besides this, Learning Standards for Language Other Than English, students are also expected to achieve the standards of speaking and listening. Blogs then can be good places where they can upload their voice messages and videos with some words explanations, and they can interact with peers and demonstrate their speaking and listening skills here.
Teachers, don't hesitate to try using blogging for your teaching and own professional development!
Good knowledge of what is age-appropriate for what you are looking to do. I like that you put a lot of effort into thinking about the NYS Checkpoints when you were thinking about blog integration. I also liked the idea of being able to reach a wider audience.
ReplyDeleteI also like the idea of using blogs to showcase student work. You made a good point that students would probably take their work more seriously if they knew someone else would be looking at it. I also thing this is a good way to save their work so they can see their progress.
ReplyDeleteI'm new to using blogs and I also thought people used it to put their personal lives online but I really do see now that we as teachers can learn so much from each other using blogs!