Weblogs in Education

Huann +John+ Yuen, T+O+J (2005). Weblogs in Education. Blog Talk Doununder 2005 conference, Sydney, 0, Retrieved 07/2005, from http://www.edublog.net/files/papers/weblogs%20in%20education.pdf

The writers are trying to provide an overview of weblogs. The first section presents some definitions and key features of weblogs and the ease of creating and maintaining weblogs. The second section presents the potential using blogs for educational purpose, as well as some issues and concern.

Weblogs can be defined as, an online journal with WebPages link to websites; allowing users to navigate round the websites. The weblogs are organized, categorized, updated and arranged in reverse chronological order, with the most recent entry at the top of the blog (Paquet, 2003; Ward, 2004).

It’s easy to create and update blogs. After the blogger has created and updated his/ her blog, blogging platform automatically archives posts and replaces them with the latest content on the front page. This is done without the need for any user intervention. The writers summarized the potential of blogs for teaching and learning. They assumed that using blogs is offering students an opportunity to surface their ideas in a social plane. The ability to comment on these ideas enables individuals to participate in social construction of knowledge and meaning making. The blogging also can be used to positively enhance learning and teaching of language and music.

The writers (Tan, Teo, Awe & Lim have proved their assumption in an experiment done in Chinese language. In the experiment students were asked to post and exchange ideas and reflection on their readings through their personal blogs; these reflection collectively formed a reading portfolio over time.

Findings from the post- project survey indicated that students felt their writing improved as blogs allowed them to view how others wrote. The students encouraged when they saw the positive comments that were given to their posts. In addition they discovered that their proficiencies in Hanyu Pinyin had improved as a result of inputting Chinese characters using it. Also Chong & Soo (2005) examined the pedagogical efficacies of blogs in undergraduate music education. They found out that blogging allowed learning to extend beyond the classroom and students were encouraged to engage in critical reflection.

They added, as evident in the students’ posts, blogging also facilitate the exchange of ideas between peers and process of students analyzing their peers’ posts.
I think that using blogs in teaching & learning can not be effective unless students have clear instructions and guide lines that teach them how to use blogs to post their work. Blogs offer students an opportunity to learn from other users of such blogs and the feedbacks form their instructors to improve their language skills.
I concluded that blogs can be an acceptable discussion platform for shy students who most likely hesitate to participate in a classroom in front of their classroom mates, consequently help them build up some kind of confidence in themselves.

Reference
Ø http://www.edublog.net/files/papers/weblogs%20in%20education.pdf
Ø http://chapman-online.org/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=3353566&CPURL=chapman-online.org&Survey=1&47=5689605&ClientNodeID=835325&coursenav=0&bhcp=1