Blogs & Wikis in a Language Classroom

The importance of using blogs in the language classroom.

Since we had never written a blog, we had to sit and think what makes blogging so unique and important for language classroom and communication. Therefore, we started to consider all the blogs that we have read and at the end, we got to the same thinking: Blogging is about sharing, give-opinion, self-expression, collective and collaborative learning.  For instance, it may look that blogging or a blog is just technology plus communication. In fact, it is, but the usage and importance of it in language classroom go beyond in benefits that each one of us could think of.

All parts, teacher, students and parents can benefit from a well-structured blog and in and even unexpected ways. According to our experience, we can notice the array of purposes and benefits it can bring to a teacher, students, and parents as well. for example:

• The meaningful communication between one and other, which promotes the interaction not only teacher-student but teacher-teacher and student-student. 
• It allows students and teachers to have a peer information feedback.
• the opportunity that both parts, student-student, to comment and collaborate professionally on every post that they have assigned.
• engages students in discussing specific/academic topics.
• Parents can be involved in classroom activities as never before.
• the chance to explore creative thinking, collaborative learning, and grow into a professional community.

If we take the role of a student we would feel motivated by technology. Let’s be honest, it’s an understandable area for them, in the same way as we feel motivated upon the usage of this kind of technology because they feel they can be creative, expressing their ideas, and have a unique voice. It also provides a very well organized digital portfolio. Paying attention to blogs, we found out that one of its features is keeping the track of all the entries of the users so that teachers and students may be able to analyze the developed skills and its improvement.

It is an excellent way you as a teacher make your students read and write because they develop their skills in the interaction outside of the classroom framework.

Now that we have seen and experience the creation of a blog, we can think of some other recommendations you may find on websites. One of the most important things when you ask your students to create a blog or if you decide to create your own to share it with your classroom community is the purpose. We all have been in the research situation for an assignment, so we look for and read blogs that discuss topics we are interested in, hence it only make sense or reaches better the purpose of a blog to have all the topic related to the same category or theme. Taking into consideration also what is that you want to say, that goes hand and hand with the purpose.

Using this technological tool for teaching-learning in classrooms, we believe, it’s challenging as well as rewarding for both parts, teachers, and students. We can engage our students to approach writing and reading skills for communication, we must assume an active role empowering them to express their ideas in a proper way.

Learning and teaching must bring joy, it must be fun.

For more information onblogging inspiration, check out the following article about the steps and guidelines to create a blog for your classroom:

https://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org/step-1-set-up-your-class-blog/