I love this website: TED. There are many people out there who inspire us, but it is not easy to meet with all of them. Most of the time, we only know about a few of them, who are in the same career field as us or who are spotlighted by the media. The good thing about TED is that they draw all those people together and give us an opportunity to listen to their inspirational words. I have listened to some people who are full with inspirational ideas so far, and I loved them. I'm very glad that I will be able to talk about those great people and their great ideas with my son some day in the future.
Common Craft. (November 9, 2007). Blogs in plain English [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI
“Websites consisting of dated entries typically listed in reverse chronological order on a single page” (Kolari et al., 2006, p. 92).
Publishing, sharing, connecting, and more.
Three basic components of blogs (Stone, 2004): 1) Chronology; 2) Frequency; 3) Focus (a voice/a specific topic of interest)
2. What features do blogs have?
Multimodal Publishing (such as text, image, audio, and video) Commenting Creating a network (by following or being followed) Creating a link (through a blogroll, a list of links to blogs) And MORE
3. Pentials for SL/FL learning
Blogs may:
Promote self-expression (a strong authorial voice) (e.g., Huffaker, 2005; Oladi, 2005; Warsachauer & Grimes, 2007)
Promote interactive and collaborative learning (particularly reading and writing) (Godwin-Jones, 2003; Ferdig & Trammell, 2004)
Provide an authentic audience (Warschauer & Grimes, 2007)
Help learners transform their learner identities
“Offer content for the exploration of the various nuances, registers, and genres that exist within blog writing in the target language” (Murrary & Hourigan, 2008)
Provide meaningful tasks and extended readership (Skyes, Oskoz, & Thorne, 2008)
Enhance reading and writing (Ducate & Lomicka, 2005)
Develop and refine their general ICT skills (Murrary & Hourigan, 2008)
“Another advantage is the ability to exploit what many students are already doing for fun and connect this to their reading, writing, and learning” (Will, 2005).
4. Theoretical Perspectives
Expressivism; “promotes and encourages a sense of fluency” and “supports the development of the writer’s distinctive ‘creative voice’”. (Murrary & Hourigan, 2008, p. 87)
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT): meaning-based language learning in real communicative situations.
Sociocultural orientations of language learning: -Learning as a social practice -Language as a mediational tool -Dialogism -Learning as a participation process
5. Example Cases of Using Blogs
Non-dedicated CALLware (Murrary & Hourigan, 2008)
Ducate & Lomicka (2005): University foreign language classes; A travel project in which US and French students who were participating in an exchange program documented their travels; helped US students gain a better understanding of the other perspective/culture.
Hendron(2003) states: -Blogs promote frequent entries -Promote short succinct entries -Encourage the use of headings for each entry -Put emphasis on content and not web design -Encourage discussion about material online (p. 4)
