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Teaching Teachers
to use weblogs
effectively This site is presented as
part of a CALL-IS Internet Fair planned for TESOL 2005, San Antonio TX,
USA, by Thomas Leverett, CESL, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale,
C'dale IL 62901-4518 USA, and Jessica Montgomerie, CESL, SIUC
[ CESL ][ Weblogs in
esl/efl ][ Effective Web
Design ]
This session hopes
to identify difficulties of using new media both across cultures and
across platforms; difficulties both in teaching ESL Writing teachers to
use weblogs to teach English to international students seeking basic
fluency in an intensive English program, and in teaching ESL to a single
class*.
The experiences of two different teachers in different teaching
situations are explored; the resulting weblogs show the level of
accomplishment reached by various students and teachers.
[ Quotes ][ Resources ][
Our stories
][ Advice
][ articles ]
Links
CESL Teachers'
weblog CESL
Students' weblog CESL
Today, student newspaper Weblogs in
esl/efl Teachers'
resources Integrate the
web Tom
Leverett's weblog Jessica Montgomerie's
weblog Make your
own weblog Internet Fair Thursday schedule
Resources
On blogging and esl/efl education
ESL/EFL weblogs
EFL/ESL
Weblogs: Thinkabouts EdBlogger Praxis Blogspot: using weblogs in English
language teaching Weblog
definitions Weblogs: the
possibilities are limitless! Weblogs
Compendium Weblogs in
esl/efl
On teachers' web presence
Barbara
Dieu's Webooklet on Blogging and Presence Online Curt
Bonk's references Vance Stevens' Webheads in action: Community formation online and its role in
language learning, online tutorial Building a
Great Web Site, J. C. Otto
Weblogs to visit
International
weblogger's day Weblogs of teachers,
ITESL-J Teaching English in
Korea, James Trotta
Tesall bloglog The English blog
Teresa Almeida d'Eca's Blogs by webheads Slings and arrows Becoming a webhead 2005
incorporated subversion
Collections of articles
Papers
on weblogging Weblog
articles Educational
weblog articles
Quotes
On weblogs as a medium
My favorite part about working with class weblogs in addition to
personal weblogs is that you can compare how different individuals
approach the same topic from unique perspectives. I recently read
sixteen essays about the same experience (a class trip), and I can't
find two identical responses. Putting these varied accounts together on
one weblog creates a kind of mosaic effect, and I hope it is one other
readers will also enjoy.
-Jessica Montgomerie, CESL teacher, 2005
As blogs enter mainstream public consciousness from the margins of the
Internet where they originated, they bring a hidden and newly awakened
army of interactive participants who may be experiencing the kinds of
unsettling (to the powers that be) critical consciousness that is
within the goals of the increasingly democratized culture such as Paulo
Freire as an educator sought to foster.
-C. Boese (n.d.)
Teacher's presence
Web presence is in essence the gift to see ourselves as others see us,
enhanced uniquely by the Internet. It might be more precisely defined
as an ability to convey messages in text, sound, and image over the
Internet through means of communicating asynchronously through fixed
URLs. It used to be that to establish Web presence, one had to be in
that group of cognoscenti known as "Webmasters" who created sites
in HTML code and then uploaded files manually to host servers with
restricted access. But nowadays, anyone with an Internet connection can
be a "Webmaster" in a matter of minutes.
-Vance Stevens (2005)
Shortly after I began producing Rebecca's Pocket I noticed two side
effects I had not expected. First, I discovered my own interests. I
thought I knew what I was interested in, but after linking stories for a
few months I could see that I was much more interested in science,
archaeology, and issues of injustice than I had realized. More
importantly, I began to value more highly my own point of view. In
compusing my link text every day I carefully considered my own opinions
and ideas, and I began to feel that my perspective was unique and
important.
-Rebecca
Blood (2000)
...the online comments feature accompanying blog use links the teacher
to a virtual community on a global scale for support and feedback. In
her famous diary, "Teacher", arguably the most influential of all
teacher diaries ever written, Sylvia Ashton-Warner (1963:213) writes of
her diary: "Its purpose has been already fulfilled. I was lonely,
professionally. I wanted gifted, intimate understanding. I've had it.
I'm no longer professionally alone." These words illustrate how a diary
(e.g. a blog) may be used for both research and teacher training in the
absence of collegiate body or professional development schemes...the
comments feature enables the teacher to invite an unlimited community of
practitioners to join in the dialogue, reaching out to a very real
global net of professional knowledge and support.
-R.
Suzuki (2004)
Weblogs in a writing program
...while writing pedagogy often emphasises the need to attend to
audience and, perhaps, to have a conception of 'the ideal reader', the
fact remains that students in school-based writing classes typically
have no authentic, tangible audience. Moreover, there is little or
nothing in writing pedagogy that invites students to begin from their
concrete membership of affinity groups, or to go about establishing a
constituency for real life (non artificial) purposes. On the contrary,
much of the authentic writing students do in school settings for real
audiences is ultra vires and discounted, if not punished.
-C. Lankshear & M.
Knobel (2003)
...it is evident that so far as matters of purpose and a concern for
quality are concerned the 'orders' evident in the blogging world and the
world of classroom writing pedagogy are almost neatly reversed.
Bloggers begin from a felt sense of purpose and take it from there, or
else simply stop blogging. Writing pedagogy usually does not presume
purpose, but somehow hopes to prepare learners for being effective
writers in contexts where they do encounter serious purpose. Likewise,
bloggers begin with a point of view they want to share with others.
Without this there is no cogent basis from which to blog. By contrast,
so much powerful writing pedagogy actually sets out from the assumption
that student points of view need to be developed, shaped up, or made
more worthy of attention.
-C. Lankshear & M.
Knobel (2003)
Personal publishing allows for incorporated subversion and volatile
design in online education. It's online unplugged. Indeed, the
socially and individually constructivist principles which supposedly
inform current teaching practice (but which, in fact, rarely do) find
their closest allies in the "edit this page" button of a wiki or the
unedited expression and knowledge network development of a weblog.
-
James Farmer (2003)
Teachers & Technology
...it is often remarked that teachers, while often among society's most
liberal members, are also, as keepers and carriers of tradition, at the
same time conservative and slow to change...While the growth of
technology has been rapid, teachers have been generally slow to adopt
this technology, and even slower to make productive use of it.
-Gratton, 1998, quoted in Lam,
2000
...if you don't have a strong curriculum as a foundation, technology
will do little to improve your schools and might even have a negative
impact.
-Van
Cooley, 1998
If you're a teacher, you don't want to step into a classroom with
something you don't know how it works, because you look like an idiot.
It's already stressful to use something in a classroom, but if you don't
know [how to use it], that's adding more stress.
-Teacher, quoted in
Lam,
2000
The thing that puzzles me is, when every student is facing the screen,
then how am I going to talk to them, through e-mail? So I have to learn
the pedagogy first, the classroom teaching method using computers.
-Teacher, quoted in Lam,
2000
Much as policymakers and administrators, teachers are very concerned
about efficiency. But their criteria for efficiency are anchored in
classrooms. In coping with conflicting goals in an age-graded
organization, teachers use criteria forged out of their experiences to
decide which electronic tools they should use routinely. Teachers ask:
Is the machine simple enough for me to learn quickly? Can it be used in
more than one situation? Is it reliable or does it break down often?
If it breaks down, do I have to fix it or will someone else repair it?
How much time and energy do I have to envest in learning to use the
machine vs. the return it will have for my students? When students use
the machine, will there be disruption? Will it maintain or compromise
my authority to maintain order and cultivate learning?
-
Larry Cuban (1996).
The main reasons for the teachers' decisions regarding technology seemed
to depend on whether the teacher was personally convinced of the
benefits of using technology for L2 instruction, a factor that is
underemphasized in previous studies...the results of this study indicate
that it is unfair to brand teachers as 'technophobic;' they suggest that
teachers' decisions regarding technology use are based not on fear but
on personal convictions.
Lam,
2000
When you introduce technology into a school, I've found, you have only a
small window of time to develop enthusiasm for the new tool before
teachers (and administrators) become cynical. And once they grow
cynical, you're going to have a hard time turning them around.
-Van Cooley,
1998
The road to success is often fraught with frustration, anger, and even
hostility. It takes time and patience to build a community of technology
users, but if you persevere, you can find a way to get there.
-Van Cooley,
1998
No matter how many computers are available or how much training teachers
have had, there are still substantial numbers who are "talking the talk"
but not "walking the walk."
-Byrom and
Bingham (pdf)
Articles
WEBLOGS
Blood, R. (2000, Sept.). weblogs: a
history and perspective. rebecca's pocket.
http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html. Accessed
3-05.
Blood, R. (2005, Feb.). Ten tips for a
better weblog. Rebecca's Pocket.
http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/ten_tips.html. Accessed 2-05.
Boese, C. (n.d.). The spirit of Paulo Freire in blogland: Struggling for a
knowledge-log revolution. Into the blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community,
and the Culture of Weblogs.
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/the_spirit_of_paulo_freire.html.
Accessed 2-05.
Campbell, A. (2003, Feb. ). Weblogs for
use in esl classrooms. ITESLJ IX, 2.
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Campbell-Weblogs.html. Accessed
2-05.
Farmer, J. (2003).
The potential of personal publishing in education. Xplanazine.
http://www.xplanazine.com/archives/2003/10/incorporated_su_5.php.
Accessed 3-05.
Fiedler, S. (2003). Personal webpublishing as a refective conversational tool for
self-organized learning. In T. Burg (Ed.) BlogTalks (pp. 190-216).
Vienna, Austria.
http://seblogging.cognitivearchitects.com/stories/storyReader$963.
Accessed 3-05.
Glaser, M. (2004, 5-11). Scholars discover
weblogs pass test as mode of communication. Online Journalism
Review.
http://ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1084325287.php. Accessed
2-05.
Huffaker, D. (2004, June).
The educated blogger. First Monday 9, 6.
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_6/huffaker/index.html. Accessed
2-05.
Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2003, Apr.). Do-it-yourself
broadcasting: Writing weblogs in a knowledge society. AERA 2003,
Chicago IL.
http://www.geocities.com/c.lankshear/blog2003.
Accessed 3-05.
Stevens, V. (2005, Jan. 10). Establishing and maintaining a web presence: A
guide for educators.
http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/papers/tesl-ej/
04dec/webpres.htm. Accessed 2-05.
Suzuki, R. (2004, June).
Diaries as introspective research tools: From Ashton-Warner to
Blogs. TESL-EJ, online journal.
http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/information/tesl-ej/ej29/int.html. Accessed
3-05.
TEACHERS & TECHNOLOGY
Bell, M. A. (2002, Feb.). Technophobia to
Technophilia. Teachers.net Gazette 3, 2.
http://teachers.net/gazette/feb02/mabell.html. Accessed 2-05.
Byrom, E., and Bingham, M. (2001). Factors
influencing the effective use of technology in teaching and learning
(pdf). SEIR TEC Intensive Site schools.
http://www.seirtec.org/publications/lessons.pdf. Accessed 2-05.
Cooley, V. (1998, June). Technology Lessons:
Creating a community of technology users leads to some hard-won
realizations. Electronic School Online.
http://www.electronic-school.com/0698f3.html. Accessed 2-05.
Cuban, L. (1996, Oct. 9).
Techno-Reformers and Classroom Teachers. Education Week.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1996/10/09/06cuban.h16.html. Accessed
3-05.
Lam, Y. (2000, Mar.).
Technophilia vs. Technophobia: A preliminary look at why second-language
teachers do or do not use technology in their classrooms. Canadian
Modern Language Review 56, 3.
http://www.utpjournals.com/product/cmlr/563/563-Lam.html. Accessed
2-05.
Muller, N. (2004, March). Obstacles to Technology Implementation. Nellie's English
Projects.
http://www.nelliemuller.com/Obstacles_to_Technology_Implementation.htm.
Accessed 2-05.
*This proposal was originally
written with Laura Halliday's name on it; the intention was to share
what she was doing with an MA TESOL class along with what CESL was
doing. She, however, was unable to complete the project or attend the
conference, and Jessica Montgomerie graciously took her place.
 Page maintained
by
Thomas
Leverett, CESL, SIUC
Photo at top: Leap of Faith, Kurt Larsen
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