Week 6 - Educational Blogosphere – its value from a pre-service teacher’s eye

Consider blogs as a global media form, examine the practice of blogging and explore the phenomenon of the blogosphere in detail. In the blog this week the task is to consider one of the following topics (with regards to one of articles listed below).

You can also draw on further scholarly sources from your own research, and expand your approach by considering or revisiting concepts listed in the unit glossary.

 

Educational Blogosphere – its value from a pre-service teacher’s eye

Cambridge Online dictionary (n.d.) defines “blog” as “a regular record of your thoughts, opinions or experiences that you put on the Internet for others to read”. When blogs mingle, they give birth to a term called “blogosphere”, which is about “all of the blogs on the Internet as a collective whole” (Merriam Webster Dictionary, n.d.). By considering blog as a global media form, I would like to examine the progress of educational blogging and explore the phenomenon of blogosphere in detail, from a pre-service English teacher’s perspective.

 

In the suggested reading by Roberston, the education sector begins to realise the benefit of blogging, which helps facilitating reflecting learning and encouraging collaborative learning (Roberston 2011), it is harnessed as a tool for higher education students “to learn how to learn”. I do think that blogging can be introduced to secondary students because as Roberston identifies, blogging enables students for self-directed learning, social support and emotional expression (2011, p. 1629). Moreover, Ferdig and Trammell hold that blogs are “ideal spaces for students to make meaning and publish their reflections, thoughts and understandings for an authentic audience” (as cited in Roberston 2011, p. 1631).

 

As far as I know, there are not many schools in Hong Kong incorporating blogging into their coursework. However, as a pre-service teacher, I do advocate incorporating blogging into their coursework, because it is a more interactive approach in facilitating students’ learning. Whereas written reflection and evaluation are rather formal and rigid, blogging are less stringent, offering students more sense of ownership and control over their learning (i.e. On planning and reflecting their own learning progress). As the culture of blogging is extensive among teenagers, they can assist and sympathise each other by offering constructive comments, hence enabling a mutual-supportive virtual community and the existence of blogosphere.

 

In the world of blogosphere, Deng and Yuen (2011) suggest an educational blog affordances framework, students write to express themselves, and hence social connection can be built by reflecting on peers’ blogs or external blogs (in this case, language-learning blogs, such as Learning English with Michelle - http://learningenglishwithmichelle.blogspot.com.au/), and gradually initiates social interaction. For example, I may give junior secondary students prompts to write about (E.g. "Aeroplane" or "Elephant", and they can develop their own piece of work with genres they prefer, such as limericks and haiku). For senior secondary students, I may invite them to develop their blogs on different aspects of English (E.g. Media, documentaries, movies). From the blogging practice, students write to themselves and their peers, thus a closely linked blogosphere is possible.  Similar blogging practice would be impressive. As learning should be in line with technology advancement, such virtual learning is widely accessible and should be implemented across classrooms.

 

References

'Blog' n.d., Cambridge Online Dictionary, Cambridge University Press

'Blogosphere' n.d., Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Merriam-Webster.

Deng, L & Yuen A H K 2011 ‘Towards a framework for educational affordances of blogs’, Computers and Education, vol. 56 (2), pp. 441 – 451.

Robertson, J 2011 ‘The educational affordances of blog for self-directed learning’, Computers and Education, vol. 57, pp. 1628 – 1644.