IE workshop on Using Weblogs with ESL Students

What is a Weblog?

Here's how I explained it to my students using another teacher's explanation and examples: http://alothman-b.tripod.com/weblog_finalpro.htm
This site belongs to Buthaina Al Othman, who teaches English for Science at the Unversity of Kuwait.

Though most commonly described as an online journal, weblogs, or "blogs" can be used in many different ways with ESL students. They are very similar to a webpage, but are much easier to set up (one computer lab session will do), and easier to work with. Students can post their writing, comment on each other's blogs, post pictures and images (reasonably easily), and individualize their blog in many ways. They can be a place where students work on projects together - as a workspace, or even to publish the finished product. There's also such a thing as a photoblog, where students can post pictures and write comments about them. One instructor (Barbara Dieu) even invited a mystery guest to visit her blog, and the students had to ask him questions until they figured out who it was.

Blogs can be used for reflective, journal type writing, which you can stimulate with questions or readings that you want students to respond to, or they can be used as a place to publish the corrected draft of class writing assignments.

Blogs provide a personal website for students - a place to practise writing in English and see their work published in a really attractive format. For example, students might want to use their blog to tell about their home country, or if they're into music, to post the lyrics to their favourite songs. They can do surveys, comment on news stories, try creative writing - all kinds of things.

Blogs are exciting because the students' work is actually published on the Web. Even simple English looks good, and the students can tell their family and friends the URL (address) of their blog, to show off their work and invite visitors to comment. In working on their blog, students not only refine their language skills, but also develop their own "voice" in English. Knowing that other people will read their work motivates them to strive for excellence, and because all their posts are archived, students can look back and see the progress they've made (ideas borrowed from Barbara Dieu's presentation in the EV Online 2005 session, "Using Weblogs in ESL/EFL Classes").

For a great introduction to blogging with ESL/EFL students, you can listen to the recording of Barbara Dieu's presentation at: http://www.alado.net/webheads (Click on "Bee Dieu's 31 Jan 05 Blogs and Blogging in Language and Learning Archive") and visit her award-winning blog at: http://the_english_dept.tripod.com/index.html (Don't just look at the front page - click on some of the links, and have a look at her students' work).

For a list of ways that blogs can be used in education, go to: http://anvil.gsu.edu/EduBlogInsights/2004/10/05.

And for an Internet activity to introduce your students to blogs, try the archived Business English Online lesson on Blogs from January 24th, which can be found at: http://www.businessenglishonline.net/e-lessons/archive.htm.

To see the blogs my students have created, go to http://ievcc.blogspot.com/ or click on the Advanced Writing and Grammar class link in the sidebar (of this blog).

"Easy for the students" you say, "but what about me?" Honestly, you don't need to know much about computers to be able to set up a blog and link your students' blogs to it. If you're reluctant to get too involved, you could make a single class blog, and give the students membership rights to contribute to it.

A word of advice: Set up a blog for yourself first. There are a number of (really) easy to follow tutorials to get you started. I adapted one for my class to use, but in the end, they didn't need it. I use Blogger, because it's easy, reliable and one of the most popular blogging sites. It's also free.

So, where do I find out how to get started? Try one of the tutorials listed here: http://feedster.com/tutorials/bloggerbasics/
http://www.geocities.com/wentzao2004/writing/blogs/how_to (This last one was done by an ESL instructor for her students). Or try the tutorial I adapted for my ESL students, at Knowplace.ca. You will need an enrollment key to see the tutorial. The key is: practice. To go to the tutorial now, click on: http://knowplace.ca/moodle_1.4.3/mod/resource/view.php?id=1451

Please feel free to use this blog as a resource. Below, I have posted comments about my experiences in blogging with IE students this term and will continue to add more as I go along. If you have any problems or comments yourself, and you have an account with Blogger, you can comment on this blog.
Click on the Comment link, and then click on Post a Comment. It will say "no anonymous comments allowed", but if you have an account with Blogger, you are not anonymous and are welcome to comment.

Of course, there's one thing (at least!), I've forgotten: many teachers create blogs for their own use. I'm including this example because it has a video and audio clip - just to show how much you can do with a blog once you get into it. Click on: http://bobed2.blogspot.com/