Blogging
Why blog?
A weblog is an easy way for teachers and students to publish anything on the web: text, images, audio or video. Whatever it is you want to publish live online can get there in one click by using this online publishing tool - no ICT technicians, no computer code to write, no software to download. A weblog also invites conversations with others by providing the possibility to comment on each post made by the author.
Weblog is often shortened to 'blog', and a whole language has sprouted up around the term - for example: the blogosphere, blogvangelists, vlogs (the video version).
'Traditional media send messages; blogs start conversations.' Loic Lemeur, CEO SixApart Europe
Conversations and making links
Teachers, too, have been used to sending messages to their students, but more are discovering that blogging opens up the type of conversation that can be very enriching for their students - and for themselves.
Basic principles
- Person A writes a post on a subject.
- Persons B to Z write comments about each post, suggesting things that could be considered in a different way and congratulating the author on the parts that are good.
- Person A posts again, this time taking into account what Persons B to Z have said … and so the process continues.
How are blogs being used today?
Blogging has already emerged as a positive tool in the improvement of writing in English language (in the US). In the last six months, many Scottish teachers have taken to blogging as a way of keeping track of their CPD and some are using the tool with their students.
For more information on what blogging is and how it can be used on a basic level in an MFL setting, listen to Peter Ford on the MFLE Podcast No. 10.