USING BLOGS FOR STUDENT EDUCATION:
- Depending on the subject area, teachers can make use of blogs for their students in different ways to supplement their learning. In my case, as a Korean language teacher I believe I could use blogs with my students to develop their Korean writing skills. As a daily assignment, I could post questions in Korean that my students would have to answer in Korean. I would include a criterion or rubric for students to follow when answering, such as 'respond with one sentence with no less than five words and using at least two vocabulary words covered in class. Each response must be different.' In this way, students will have to be creative as they would not be able to respond with the same answer as another student that already posted. Also, every student will be able to read the responses left by the other students along with my input for each answer, so that they can gain a broader understanding of the language. For example, say I post the question, "가장 좋아하는 계절이 뭐예요? (What is your favorite season?)," students could post something along the lines of "저는 자주 수영할 수 있어서 여름을 가장 좋아해요." ("Summer is my favorite season because I can go swimming often.)," which I could check and make corrections too and other students would be able to see all of the possibilities of how to correctly respond to such a question. In addition, these are open ended questions, so it elicits creativity from the students. This is something I would do for a beginner class, but for a more advanced class, I would do something similar to what one of the articles suggested, and that is to create a current event or discussion topic that my students would be able to respond to and voice their opinions about in Korean. Everyone could see each others' responses which would further the conversation. In this way, students are using the language in a more authentic way. Those are just a couple of ways in which I could use blogs for my class, but I am sure there are more.
The following are the learning standards being implemented in these activities (To view the website listing all of the New York State education standards for foreign languages, go to this page.):
USING BLOGS FOR SELF EDUCATION:
- One of the articles stated that, as teachers, we can use blogs to express our concerns about how we taught a particular lesson. Usually we worry how effective we were at teaching a particular lesson and what we can do to improve our methods in teaching such a lesson, so it would be great if we could share those concerns openly with others, and get a good amount of feedback and advice back from other professionals in the field who have more experience or who think can be helpful to us. This allows us as teachers to gain new ideas from other educators to make our lessons more successful. In turn, we can comment on the blogs of others to share our own successful approaches to teaching a particular lesson. It's important for us as teachers to not only recognize what we need to improve on, but to actually put forth an effort to improve on it. We can do this using blogs in this way. This goes back to our theme of a 'community of practice' we had in MOD#1, where we as teachers shouldn't stress ourselves out by "reinventing the wheel," but instead seek help, advice, ideas, and resources from other teachers to improve our practice.
- Depending on the subject area, teachers can make use of blogs for their students in different ways to supplement their learning. In my case, as a Korean language teacher I believe I could use blogs with my students to develop their Korean writing skills. As a daily assignment, I could post questions in Korean that my students would have to answer in Korean. I would include a criterion or rubric for students to follow when answering, such as 'respond with one sentence with no less than five words and using at least two vocabulary words covered in class. Each response must be different.' In this way, students will have to be creative as they would not be able to respond with the same answer as another student that already posted. Also, every student will be able to read the responses left by the other students along with my input for each answer, so that they can gain a broader understanding of the language. For example, say I post the question, "가장 좋아하는 계절이 뭐예요? (What is your favorite season?)," students could post something along the lines of "저는 자주 수영할 수 있어서 여름을 가장 좋아해요." ("Summer is my favorite season because I can go swimming often.)," which I could check and make corrections too and other students would be able to see all of the possibilities of how to correctly respond to such a question. In addition, these are open ended questions, so it elicits creativity from the students. This is something I would do for a beginner class, but for a more advanced class, I would do something similar to what one of the articles suggested, and that is to create a current event or discussion topic that my students would be able to respond to and voice their opinions about in Korean. Everyone could see each others' responses which would further the conversation. In this way, students are using the language in a more authentic way. Those are just a couple of ways in which I could use blogs for my class, but I am sure there are more.
The following are the learning standards being implemented in these activities (To view the website listing all of the New York State education standards for foreign languages, go to this page.):
#1) Performance
Indicator - LOTE.ML.1.2.A.B: Students can compose short informal notes
and messages to exchange information with members of the target culture.
#2) Performance Indicator - LOTE.ML.1.2.B.F: Students can
produce written narratives and expressions of opinion about radio and television
programs, newspaper and magazine articles, and selected stories, songs, and
literature of the target language.
- One of the articles stated that, as teachers, we can use blogs to express our concerns about how we taught a particular lesson. Usually we worry how effective we were at teaching a particular lesson and what we can do to improve our methods in teaching such a lesson, so it would be great if we could share those concerns openly with others, and get a good amount of feedback and advice back from other professionals in the field who have more experience or who think can be helpful to us. This allows us as teachers to gain new ideas from other educators to make our lessons more successful. In turn, we can comment on the blogs of others to share our own successful approaches to teaching a particular lesson. It's important for us as teachers to not only recognize what we need to improve on, but to actually put forth an effort to improve on it. We can do this using blogs in this way. This goes back to our theme of a 'community of practice' we had in MOD#1, where we as teachers shouldn't stress ourselves out by "reinventing the wheel," but instead seek help, advice, ideas, and resources from other teachers to improve our practice.
I like your idea to have students need to post different answers to that they would have to be creative. It is the same thing I try to do in my class. It forces students to not only read what others are writing but also draw on as much vocabulary as they can.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement that as teachers we shouldn't stress out by trying to "reinvent the wheel”. I was lucky enough last year to take a number of my graduate classes with the same small number of LOTE students and together we became our our little “community of practice”. We often helped one another expand on ideas for lesson activities and shared ideas for future units. And I think blogs could easily recreate this experience on a larger scale.
ReplyDeleteI loved my graduate school "community of practice". It was a great way to share experiences (good and bad), commiserate about student teaching/grad.school/etc., but also to learn from one another. Some of the greatest and most useful tools in my toolbox come from that PLC.
DeleteI liked the way you thought about getting different responses from students, "include a criterion or rubric for students to follow when answering, such as 'respond with one sentence with no less than five words and using at least two vocabulary words covered in class. Each response must be different.' " This also makes for really nice quantifiable objectives for learning goals. It also made me think of Six Word Memoirs, which make a great student blog assignment.
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DeleteDear Matthew,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. One question. Do you think there is something lost in translation when blogging with Korean students who traditionaly are very conservative and concerned about losing face? For example, many Korean students wouldn't dare to blog or criticize the teacher on a blog because in Korean society it is considered offensive, whereas in the us, we are encouraged to challenge the teachers opinions.
Hello Anwar and Matthew,
DeleteI agree with your thoughts and have experienced situations similar to this. I would also be interested in Matthew's thoughts. I currently work with refugees from around the world and have seen conservative/ modest behaviors among students. By discussing the differences in cultural behaviors through acculturation scenarios, the students start to become more open over time with group writing expression. From my experiences, having a private journal/ blog for thoughts is a great transition into students becoming more comfortable with personal expression while bridging their L1 culture into their new L2 identity. After the students become for familiar and comfortable with our literary forms of expression and culture, we are able to gradually experiment with new forms of literature and writing experiences. I have noticed that modeling peer review procedures then transitioning into peer review writing has numerous benefits in CDT situations. Additionally, many scholarly studies on identity and adolescent (and adult) ESL writing exist to discuss similar situations.
This is a very interesting question. Matthew, if you get a chance, I would love to hear your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your words that students' language can be more authentic when they are communicating through blogs. Students' words used in class sometimes can be different from the language we use in the real world, so blogging can be the path to the outside real world. In blogs, students post their own entries and comment on others' blogs so that they can generate more abundant vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteYou blog was interesting to hear from a teacher that teaches Korean. I am curious, how do you get the Korean fonts in the blog? It seems to be an overwhelming response that Blogs are good to allow students to comment on each other posts.
ReplyDelete