Brainstorming Blogs: Using blogs in ESL university classrooms

So… you always wanted to take your classroom online? Maybe you are a tree-hugger who wants to save the environment and cut down on the copy machine usage? Or your students are active and need mobile access to their resources? Or maybe… you are digital native that is looking for your homeland? Or an immigrant floating aimlessly amidst the sea of technology looking for a manageable port…

Time to reorganize. 

The general wisdom on classroom blog usage states there are three garden varieties: teachers’ blogs, student blogs, and the classroom collaborative blog.

Teachers’ blogs is an online organizer. It provides the students with all the latest happenings, associated materials, and calendared events. No student will ever be able to say that the dog ate their homework again as students could even upload their projects via your online platform. Now… what you do with the infamous “internet is down” excuse… is between you and your local internet provider.

Some years ago, one of my first colleagues used a teachers’ blog for his advanced ESL conversation classes. He’d write summaries of the news stories and post the links. He was a very politically bent man and so often students would be provided with links to the latest news in the English-speaking world. Online dialogues would often ensure within the comment boxes thus furthering the students’ commitment to the evening news.

Currently, I am using Facebook to organize my university students. I create each class a private, locked group page. Most of them are already on Facebook and it gives me the ability to communicate with them. I post class materials and use it to send class messages. My beginning level first year students’ homework this week was to post an introduction with images. They are enjoying the mixing of school and social media. In the end, there is no excuse why they didn’t complete homework or study for a test. It provides a new level of accountability and connectivity in the classrooms.

Modern multitasking. 

Nonetheless, I don’t think a teachers’ blog is a good alternative for these low level English-speaking students (unless my blog was in Korean, their native language).

Now, I can see where a classroom collaborative blog might be a hit with my more advanced university students (and even my adult learners). A classroom blog is a site where students collaboratively contribute to course materials through posts, images, and a dialogue outside of (but intimately tied to) their classroom experiences.

A classroom blog gives them a cleaner, larger palette to create upon than does Facebook or other more cluttered social media sites.

Korea is a camera culture. 

For example, my current conversation class is studying visual literacy in language learning. Their first homework assignment is to locate themselves in their Korean culture visually. They are to take pictures of what they consider to be uniquely contemporary Korea culture and to explain why they think it is so. I believe creating a blog format and allowing students to partner on their collaboration will provide them more of a public forum with more versatility than Facebook (my original intended location for this assignment), and more sense of security by working with a friend. The students who want to provide more than one perspective will be able to do so and those who are more confident writers can proliferate more freely.

Also, the classroom collaborative blog will act more as a living collage as the students create their version of contemporary Korea culture. They will be able to visually identify trends and differences. And they will be able to look back on their early perspectives as their ability to identify and interpret visual literacy becomes more sophisticated. It is also a road map of their educational experiences together (and one they will hopefully refer back to after the class is over).

One final mention is the student blogs; a blog created and maintained by students, on their own. In such a collective culture as Korea, I am not sure that is as effective of a concept as the collaborative classroom blog mentioned above.