THIS
IS YOUR CLASS ON WEBLOGS
by Thomas Leverett
CESL, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale
leverett @ siu.edu
Introduction
Weblogs have come into their own as an educational tool (Downes, 2004),
and are beginning to be used more often in ESL/EFL settings in a variety of
ways. The Southern Illinois University Center for ESL program (http://www.siu.edu/~cesl), which caters to students of diverse nationalities,
backgrounds, and technological
experience, began using weblogs with
its students in August 2004. Now, though technological skills are not
thoroughly integrated into the syllabi of the program, every student who passes
through the program leaves it with a minimal standard of technological
competence, thanks in part to their work with weblogs. For these students, the most profound change
in their learning is simply that they are opening themselves up to public
scrutiny at the same time they are learning English and learning the skills of
finding sources of supporting material to link to and making the links
appropriately.
It has been said that
weblogs straddle a line between personal journal and public forum. They can in fact be used for other purposes
as well. At CESL, each class has its
own weblog, each student is asked to start his/her own, and teachers can ask
students to put posts on either or both in presenting formal writing on the Web
at the higher levels. Now they are used for many purposes, including displaying
student research papers in online portfolios, providing venues for student
announcements, contests, poetry and photography, and collecting student work
for our online newsletter, CESL Today
(http://www.siu.edu/~cesl/students/cesltoday/csltdy.html).
It's a major
undertaking to put a program, or even a class, on the Web, but there are a
number of good reasons to do it. In this paper I will discuss three reasons,
and show how I have used weblogs in teaching at different levels and for
different purposes.
Three reasons for using weblogs
Better integration into the target language community
The primary reason that I expect my students to publish their work is
the value of that work in ultimately integrating them into their target
English-speaking community. Kern and Warschauer (2000), in their discussion of
sociocognitive approaches to CALL, say that
A pedagogy of networked
computers must…take a broad view, not only examining the role of information
technology in language learning, but also the role of language learning in the
information technology society. If our goal is to help students enter into new
authentic discourse communities, and if those discourse communities are
increasingly located online, then it seems appropriate to incorporate online
activities for their social utility as well as for their perceived particular
pedagogical value.
A crucial difference between students' publishing work on weblogs and
preparing paper copies of finished work (they do that also) is that anyone can
read the weblogs at any time, and people do. While most writing teachers hold
the English-speaking world as the ideal, if abstract, audience of essays and
research papers, those who publish on weblogs experience this audience first
hand. If our ultimate goal is integration into an English-speaking discourse
community, we have at least shown them one, and begun the process, in marked
contrast to the private-exchange model, where a student's paper is seen
primarily by one teacher (a private reader) - who may, by virtue of knowing the
student, be more tolerant of his/her writing weaknesses than the typical
English-speaking reader, or their academic teacher.
Integration into a new world of inter-connected media
Second, it is important for students to become familiar with a weblog
environment, both as a user and as a creator, learning the processes of
searching for information and opinion on the Web, reading as much as is
necessary to grasp a point, and making personal comments about what they've
read. They become part of the new media in English, and blogging assignments
start that process. Siemens, in his notion of connectivism (2004), argues that
in the modern world being connected and knowing how to find information, is
even more important than what we actually know:
Connectivism is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on
rapidly altering foundations. New information is continually being acquired.
The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information
is vital. The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape
based on decisions made yesterday is also critical.
In many ways our students are ahead of us in this regard, as they
recognize the place these new media are coming to have in their world, and they
are for the most part eager to get started in using them. They are increasingly
willing to explore and accept the sometimes subtle changes that these new media
can bring to the way we see and are seen.
Lowering affective filters through forming collaborative relationships
with language learning facilitators
Finally, orienting a class toward the public, as opposed to orienting
individual students toward a teacher or toward a grade, has a profound effect
on the teacher's relationship with the student, which can otherwise become
adversarial in a subtle way. Whenever a teacher can be on the student's side in
facing the hostile world, this helps to lower the affective filter within the
class, and serves to help us keep the big picture in focus. Introducing the
real world to the classroom from the start thus clarifies the target better
than setting up a falsely comforting environment that is so different from the
real world that the student can't transfer skills upon leaving.
Approaches to using weblogs
A wide variety of uses of weblogs has emerged in our program. In some
cases, they serve to display students’ writing, or their group or collaborative
efforts, playing a minor role in a much larger effort, but nevertheless
changing the nature of the assignment by virtue of making the result results
published and public. In one class, for
example, groups of students collaborated to make weblogs for their projects,
one of which explored a series of violent deer incidents on campus (http://violentdeer.blogspot.com). The weblog itself played a minor role in the preparation of the
project, which included reading, writing, and extensive interviews, but became
important as a display venue for their finished work, and changed the
orientation of the project toward that public display. While I am sure that more innovative
approaches exist, I include two of the approaches I use with different levels
of student writers in order to show some of the practical consequences of
integrating weblogs into an ESL curriculum.
Weblogging at the lower levels
The lower to intermediate level reading/listening course seeks to
develop students' conversational fluency and develop their ability to recognize
and relate to basic English on the Web and in their environment. One goal of
the class is for them to be able to use any appropriate medium: speaking,
writing, reading, or browsing the Web, to get information that they need.
Ideally they should be able to evaluate what they see or hear on the Web: i.e
to make inferences about the people who make the pages and their purpose for
creating them. Students should also be able to not just repeat what they've
read, but also describe it, add to the discussion, and state and support an
opinion.
In the more traditional
part of the class, the reading-listening syllabus utilizes a variety of
interesting discussion-starting topics. A good textbook, of course, can do
this, but I also bring in side readings when I suspect that a tangent might be
fruitful. Sometimes these are from the Web (I lead the topic toward the Web if
I can). I try to stimulate interest; specifically, interest in the changing
world. I then assign a weblog project
that involves students’ investigating a topic and reporting to the class, on
the weblog, what they've found. They choose their own topics, and based on
these I put them into two or three groups. I suggest where to start looking and
I use the class weblog to point them to some possibilities.
Nelson
(1991) argued that learners are more likely to acquire grammatical structures
at the point at which they actually need them to communicate in real-life
situations. Thus the effort that the teacher puts in to ensure that students
are invested in a topic and want to communicate something about it is rewarded
in the process of helping them communicate successfully with the online
community. I would argue that line-editing (correcting the grammar) in this
context is both appropriate and necessary.
I also orient students toward evaluating the sites they have chosen, as
opposed to just gathering information and regurgitating it. They are asked to
tell me about the page itself, what its purpose is, and whose side it might be
on in any particular controversy.
Since the nature of
weblogs is to systematically link to what the writer is referring to, I teach
students how to link not only within the paragraphs that they write in their
posts but in the templates of their weblogs as well. This entails learning some
HTML, but this is usually not a problem for students, even if they come to the
program with no prior experience. Projects produced to date have covered topics
that the students have shown interest in, including
·
"Paparazzi" (http://ceslae2.blogspot.com/2005_11_01
_ceslae2_archive.html)
·
"Carbondale Halloween
and its accompanying violence" (http://ceslae2.blogspot.com/2005_10_01
_ceslae2_archive.html)
The program newsletter
which now appears online appeared in print form for many years. It was produced so that close friends,
relatives back home, and those in the academic environment could read about
students’ lives and interests. Newsletters are attempts at authentic
communication with a real community; however, the online version brings a
number of changes to the traditional format. Though both formats utilize the
same set of steps to ensure that students write about what they are invested
in, what is put on the Web tends to stay there and is accessed more frequently
than ink-and-paper issues. Accordingly, our assignments have become livelier,
since students’ writing is usually linked to their own weblogs as well as to
sites they are discussing. Furthermore the prevailing awareness of
"connectedness" is paramount when the articles themselves are linked
to by readers, thus giving the newsletter more exposure. We've found it easier
to track community interest in the online world than in the ink-and-paper
world, though "interest" has to be inferred from "visits" -
nobody knows how much is actually read (nor by recipients of a print newsletter
for that matter).
Portfolios and higher level writing
In the higher-level writing class, goals include researching topics
related to what a high-level content-based reading-writing class is studying;
writing a number of essays and a six-page research paper, learning how to cite
and refer to sources in an academic context, and refining academic writing
style, grammar and usage so that entry into academic fields is mitigated. Putting the academic essays, the research
papers, and a variety of other work on the Web has brought numerous changes to
the processes of the class.
The publication of the
work on the weblogs is the last step of the process, and is generally done
after all organizational changes have been made and grammar has been
edited. The online essays must have
spaces between paragraphs (or use an HTML workaround, if the blog host has
eliminated the indentation, as Blogger does), must have references linked, and
must be clearly marked as a paper that is part of our class. Abstracts for the research
paper appear in the class weblog and are linked to the paper itself, so that,
given a single subject (for example, Wal-Mart as a social issue, the subject of
research papers in the January-March 2006 term), one can read all the abstracts
together and find the papers themselves, one click away. Students who have
passed the high level have, by definition, learned how to present formal
academic work online, though their weblogs themselves may include earlier work,
links to their home countries or favorite music, or pictures of themselves,
their friends, or their pets. The presentation of their papers on weblogs makes
those written works part of a larger presentation. Thus one side benefit of the use of weblogs is that participants
develop a greater sense of community through this aspect of personal
expression.
Perhaps the single most
profound change brought by the use of personal publication in this academic
setting is the resulting accessibility of these essays and research papers by
the public, as well as by other students and teachers in the program. In the
case of the Wal-Mart research papers, the class papers covered diverse topics
related to the retail giant’s entry into a small rural area, and the
controversy surrounding that. The
collection of research papers now stands as a relatively balanced view of the
controversy, since students took both sides on the issue and did their best to
write sincere appraisals of how our community should respond to this situation.
Again, their integration into the target community has been furthered both by
their essays playing a real part in the community's ongoing dialogue about an
important issue; but also by the fact that, having done research on a timely
and important local issue, each student now has a perspective to bring to
community interactions, particularly their weekly grocery trips to Wal-Mart
with friends.
A risk for the teacher
is the fact that publishing essays implies taking a public stand on what
exactly the standard "summary-response" or "argumentative
essay" should look like, not to mention taking a stand on which kind of
essay is indeed more appropriate or valuable for the ESL student, which itself
is controversial. In our program we
gave up assignments like "cause-effect essay" and "compare-contrast
essay" in favor of "summary-response" essays leading to a
research paper. We put all of our serious work online, using APA (American
Psychological Association) standards, and teachers hope that critical reaction
will not prove their students unworthy in terms of meeting accepted standards
of style, argument, or discourse conventions But even regarding the APA
regulations, some of which may be controversial, ambiguous or in flux, we often
find that identifying correct “rules,” in order to make things “correct” for
“publication,” can be a daunting task.
The fact is that personal publishing has made all publishing more
common, and has in fact changed the definition of the word “publishing.” APA
regularly changes its standards for online reference and citation, but is hard
pressed to keep up with the rapidly evolving styles and requirements of Web
publishers.
The publication of all
work has raised the stakes in the perennial battle against plagiarism,
precisely because essays and research papers are published and remain online
permanently. Even if we didn't publish, we would still make unique assignments,
check sources, search out suspicious phrasing, or type such phrases into search
engines. The publication of the work actually helps us reinforce the seriousness
of the crime. In most cases that we see, the plagiarism was unintentional on
the student’s part, but nevertheless would have been published had we not
caught it. We find that the student’s link to the source used actually makes it
easier for us to find this kind of plagiarism, since the link allows us to
check the source fairly quickly, but even when the student has failed to cite
the source used, copying the offending phrase into Google will often uncover
its true identity. From the student’s perspective, other students’ online
models of citation done properly are most useful in working out the way the
successful paper should cite and refer to sources.
Conclusion
The practice of putting papers up on weblogs has made students' writing
better, in part because the best models for students are often the work of
others who have gone before. Our students may feel sometimes that they have an
added burden of learning obscure technological skills in order to transfer
files successfully across platforms and into weblog format. But they also have
the benefit of viewing the work of students who have gone before them; and from
these examples they can pick the models they like, or those of their friends
they most wish to emulate.
The public aspect of
portfolios has been a benefit to our program as well. Even when the product is less than perfect; the student weblogs
show what we do, what we talk about, and what we teach. Student writing is authentic, sincere and
often powerful. I support making
writing public because, in the end, the students' voices deserve to be heard,
and they contribute well to the public discussion on any number of topics. The blogosphere, with its 24-hour
spontaneity, its informality, its tolerance of youth and disrespect, and its
developing social connectedness, is a good place for the work of ESL students
and for their entry into the world of public discourse.
Students are free to
delete their entire weblog the minute they leave the program, but they very
rarely do. Once they get to academic classes, they usually struggle and are
busy, and have very little time to do any traditional "journaling",
let alone public journaling, but some do it anyway, using the skills learned in
writing class to produce writing addressing less formal ends. A surprising
number of people, upon encountering the new media with its interconnected
participation, find themselves right at home with it. In the end, pressing the
"publish" button poses challenges for each of us, and for the CESL
program itself, but its rewards have made the pioneering effort worthwhile.
References
Downes, S. (2004). Educational blogging. Educause Review, 39 (5), 14–26. Retrieved July 13, 2006 from: http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0450.asp.
Kern, R. & Warschauer, M. (2000).
Introduction: Theory and practice of network-based language teaching. In
M. Warschauer & R. Kern (Eds.), Network-based Language Teaching: Concepts and Practice.
Retrieved July 13, 2006 from: http://www.gse.uci.edu/faculty/markw/nblt-intro.html.
Nelson, M. W. (1991). At the Point of Need. Heinemann,
available at NetStores USA, http://www.opengroup.com/rabooks/086/0867092653.shtml.
Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism:
A learning theory for the digital age. Retrieved July 13, 2006 from
elearnspace, http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm.
Further
reading
Elkins, J. (2000). Lawyer as
writer: Peter Elbow on writing. Retrieved July 13, 2006 from: http://www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/jelkins/writeshop/elbow.html.
Glogoff, S. (2005). Instructional
blogging: Promoting interactivity, student-centered learning, and peer input.
Innovate: journal of online education. Innovate,
Journal of Online Education, 1 (5). Retrieved July 13, 2006 from: http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=126.
Lowe, C. & Williams, T. (2004). Moving to the Public: weblogs in the writing classroom.
In L.J. Gurak, S. Antonijevic, L. Johnson, C. Ratliff, & J. Reyman (Eds.), Into the blogosphere: Rhetoric, community,
and culture of weblogs. Retrieved July 13, 2006 from: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/moving_to_the_public_pf.html.
Program
URL’s
Editor’s notes:
This presentation was made as a regular session at the Webheads in
Action Online Convergence on November 20, 2005. The original presentation
materials can be found here: http://thisisyourbrainonweblogs.blogspot.com
.
THREE WAYS TO INTEGRATE WEBLOGGING INTO WRITING CLASSES
by Thomas Leverett,
Southern Illinois University-Carbondale
leverett @ siu.edu
Introduction
Although weblogs can be private, viewed only by class
members or only by teacher and student, these three lessons are designed for
using them in their public sense: as dynamic, personal contributions to the
personal publishing revolution. In these exercises students are joining with
millions of others in publishing their thoughts on the Web, for an authentic
audience that may or may not respond to their opinions. With the teacher's help, they can understand
what they are doing, do it well, make presentable contributions and receive
feedback from authentic readers, including their own classmates. As a class newsletter, the weblog community
has the advantage of being more immediately connected to the sources of class
material and sites of interest, more dynamic (offering opportunities for
ongoing dialogue), more open to the general public, and more permanent in the
sense that it is more easily accessed in the future, more likely to be read and
appreciated later.
Class 1: Weblogging for
intermediate students: creating weblogs, getting started
Rationale
This exercise started with the usual purposes of an
intermediate reading core class: improved reading fluency, better ability to
summarize what is read and express opinions about it; desire to begin and
maintain ongoing discussion on some of the issues brought up by the
textbook. Orienting the class toward
the Web and specifically toward personal publishing on weblogs brought several
advantages. Students learned and used
new skills quickly and began writing in the new medium, linking to their
sources, and linking to the class weblog and to each other's weblogs. The basic
weblogging exercise puts their opinions to the front and allows them the
confidence of expressing it successfully in a public forum, receiving feedback,
and beginning to use their new language in ongoing discussion.
Objectives
The students:
- Learn to set up their own weblog
- Become familiar with processes of posting, editing, setting up
template
- Learn to create links in weblog posts
- Become familiar with the Web and opinions expressed in the weblog
community
- Write about sites while linking to them
- Post comments on each other's weblogs; participate in a small
weblog community
Materials
and teaching aids
Each student should have access to a computer with
Internet connection. Teacher should
have computer with Internet hookup and possibly a projector to show students
how to proceed through steps. Teacher should set up model class webpage,
remembering logon, password, and URL for future reference, and becoming
familiar with process. Some
hardware/browser combinations present problems; teacher should work through
problems before starting.
Possible
problems
Blogger or another host could be slow at a particular
hour; connections could be slow; any particular student could start out almost
helpless with mouse or with other computer basics. Students using IE on Mac
often find that blogger will not allow them to set up a weblog on a computer
that has already set another one up.
Safari, Opera, and other browsers will, however. IE also makes certain weblogs unsightly on
Macs, perhaps as part of a war of intentional incompatibility.
In weblogging the temptation to plagiarise is great,
and students are likely to copy phrases, sentences or even pictures from the
sites they are visiting. This obviously
is a teaching point. Appropriacy of
borrowing material is discussed and integrated into the class.
Class
profile
10-20 adult intermediate ESL students, from various
countries and with wide variety of technological expertise expected.
First
class: #1 Setting up a weblog
(Can be done in 30-minute segment of class; faster
ones can help slower ones; can be combined with other assignments - #2 for
example)
Students are shown the class weblog and prepared by
being told, in writing or orally, about the process of starting one:
establishing logon, password, weblog title, and URL. Optional handout may explain these and allow them to fill these
in as they acquire them. Logon must be
unique to blogger; thus, mohammed will
probably not work, but mohd4397 is
more likely to. True beginners will not
understand the concept of "URL" - this one, also, must be used to
connect the class webpage to theirs once they have one. Finally, on blogger, they must post something before connections
to their weblog will find it. As part
of this assignment, we have them post a "hello" message.
#2 Weblog
assignment: writing about websites
When they are finished with this, they are given the
first assignment, which is to visit many websites and choose one to comment
on. These are chosen by the teacher
beforehand, are put on the class weblog, are often related to class discussion
topics, and may be as hard or easy as the teacher wants. To encourage active exploration of the Web,
the topics, and the links coming from them, they should be kept easy; if they
are playing a more crucial role in the reading program, they can be hard. In any case, students can now click through
them to choose one that they like.
Their assignment is to write two paragraphs. The first paragraph
describes the site, what it does, what it looks like, what it links to, etc,
and will ultimately link to the site (I encourage them to start with "I
visited ___________" filling in the blank with the name (and/or the URL)
of the site they went to; later, they can replace this with their own sentence
that does the same thing). The second
paragraph gives their opinion and why.
It can be their opinion about the site, or about the subject; it can be
strong or weak, but it should be original and should be supported with their
own ideas. It is a fluency exercise,
like a journal, and is not intended to teach rhetorical structure; nevertheless
it can be used as the teacher wants.
Second
class: #3 Putting assignment on weblog, adding links to the weblog
This generally occurs a couple of class days after
the first class, and can also take up only half of a class, preferably the last
half, when access to a lab is secured and taking them there is not an
issue.
Students had already been asked to write out weblog
assignments on paper and bring them to class, using them as part of a speaking
exercise (in pairs, explaining to each other what they have seen and what they
thought), but this also is optional. In
any case, before starting this, they are prepared with what they want to write,
and what they want to link to. They
have been reminded that they are responsible for remembering their own logon
and password. At the computer, they log
on to their own weblog, click on "Create Post" and type in their
assignment. They are then taught how to
link their first sentence, which, on Macs, requires a minimum of code, but on
PC's requires only knowing and using an icon.
The teacher should be familiar with this process before teaching it, and
be familiar with whatever variation there is in the lab computers.
Students must master the difference between
"draft" and "publish;" teacher can use "draft" to
make grammatical correction as desired, or to have and record students'
rewrites. Some teachers make a point to
know students' logons and passwords, so that access is easier, or make students
write drafts and final copies in common spaces, so that both teacher and
student can comment and work on weblog material. Students obviously appreciate having published work be corrected
for grammar, but the "draft" function need not be used to accomplish
this end. Students will occasionally
put everything in "draft," not aware that others can't see it upon
entering their weblog.
Later
classes: adding more assignments, dropping comments
Process repeats as often as possible; we find that,
over time, students become more comfortable with the medium, and when all have
finished putting assignments on weblogs, a weblog community exists. Thus, one can go to the class page and visit
each student, reading as many weblog assignments as are finished and up, and
commenting as desired. Comments can be
required of students, and each post then becomes a site with a dialogue about a
topic.
Form of
work
Students will have their own weblog; it could have
any name on top, according to their wishes, but is linked clearly from the main
class weblog from their name or a name that they have agreed to. Thus each
student can go to the class weblog, click on their name, and see their weblog.
Each weblog will have entries consisting of two paragraphs each, the first one
linked; entries will be short enough that classmates can and will read and
comment on them.
Class 2: Weblog portfolios:
putting essays and higher level work on the Web (high-level)
Rationale
While putting formal essays, abstracts and research
papers onto weblogs may seem at first to be like wearing a suit to a picnic, in
fact the blogosphere is a good place for formal essays and research
papers. Since all writing is intended
for authentic audience, actually having a permanent, authentic English-speaking
audience for formal writing can be seen as a last step that should have been
there all along for all writing that has reached publishable condition. Allowing it a permanent place in the
blogosphere will give it a permanent place to be found, to be linked to, and to
be read by the student, friends, family, and casual readers interested in the
subject. In many cases argumentative
essays arguing for social or environmental solutions can actually contribute to
public argument and discussion, providing links to sources of interest and making
arguments that need to be heard. Commitment to this last step is a leap of
faith for the teacher, knowing that output of the class will be public and
permanent. The stakes become higher in
the ongoing war against plagiarism; students realize that in publishing they
are putting their name behind their work.
Objectives
The students
- Learn to set up their own weblog (see class #1 above), become
familiar with processes of posting, editing, setting up template; create
links in weblog posts, link to references
- Write entire essays and research papers, following APA convention,
but posting them ultimately in weblog portfolios, learning the art of
online presentation
- Write abstracts, posted on class weblog, that describe and point to
their own research paper
Materials
and teaching aids
As above, each student should have access to a
computer with Internet connection.
Teacher should have computer with Internet hookup and possibly a
projector to show students how to proceed through steps. Teacher should set up model
class webpage, remembering logon, password, and URL for future reference, and
becoming familiar with process. Some
hardware/browser combinations present problems; teacher should work through
problems before starting.
Possible
problems
As above, connections can be slow or difficult;
students may have platform compatibility issues, or have very little experience
with online presentation. Some blogger
templates have problems translating word files; others have problems when
viewed through Mac/IE or other platform/browser combinations. This is an issue if students are working
with a variety of platform/browser combinations within the same lab.
Using computers for every step of the process,
including the final step of publication of essays and research papers on
weblogs, means that students who tend toward shortcuts in their work are more
likely to plagiarize - but are also more likely to be caught, if not by the
teacher, by some future reader.
Increased vigilance in this area is mandatory at every step.
Class #1:
setting up weblog (see above)
Steps one and two can be combined, but it is best to
give students fair warning and let them visualize what their weblog will look
like; where it will fit in; how it will be linked, etc. This is where it helps that many students
have gone before them; that there are a number of weblog portfolios already
online with similar essays on them.
Lacking this, the teacher might want to find or create a model portfolio
so that students can have a model to work from.
Class #2:
putting essay(s) on weblog
It is assumed that online essays are similar to
paper-and-ink essays, with one minor difference: references are linked to the sources themselves; paragraphs are
in block style (weblogs customarily eliminate indentation), and separated by
spaces; and the work of the portfolio appears in the body of the weblog,
allowing the student to personalize and/or decorate the template (side area) of
the weblog.
It is also assumed that publication is a requirement,
but is not graded in and of itself; that at the beginning of this exercise, the
essay is already graded and perfected to a degree that is satisfactory to both
the teacher and student. Though drafts
can be uploaded and changed while online, and even offer the advantage of remaining
online for comparison purposes, generally it is not necessarily easier to grade
and edit online work that is in the draft function of blogger or another
server; most teachers are still more comfortable doing process revision in the
paper form.
Students thus have a presentable version of their
essay in a word file on their desktop, and are told to copy it and open their
blogger account using their own logon and password, and click on "create
post" and paste. Students are
shown how to link references and to check them so that they point to the
sources of the paper. Students are
advised to put spaces between paragraphs and between references as
necessary. Teacher works with
individuals on online presentation or has more technologically adept students
serve as online tutors.
If research papers are too long to be contained in a
single post (this has never happened to us), they can be divided into parts,
but with the last parts being posted first, so that the final post, the top or
first part of the paper, is posted last and given the title of the paper. For archiving purposes this multiple-post
research paper could present a problem, in that the title post must now either
link to the other posts or show how to find them by linking to the entire month
of the archives. This is necessary
because, over time, the link to the weblog itself or to the top post of the
paper may not provide immediate access to the remaining parts of the paper to
the casual observer. Teaching students
to check that their links, particularly to their own material, remain active
and useful beyond the immediate class experience is part of the process.
Timing
Finished papers can be uploaded fairly quickly;
teacher can use projector to show how it's done, how to edit posts, how to insert
links, how to change template, etc., but individual problems will invariably be
ironed out personally. More
technologically adept students can help others when finished. This will often take the last 20-30 minutes
of a class, depending on the size of
the class, and lab availability/access.
Form of
work
Online portfolios will have most recent essays and/or
research papers on top; earlier work will naturally sink to the archives. Thus portfolios will provide longitudinal
views of students' writing development, though they may only show the finished
form of each work, and not present to the public whatever editing or correction
was done to each one. As an option,
each portfolio will be linked to a class page, which will contain abstracts
pointing to research papers, and will also contain links to the weblogs of the
student writers in the classes.
Class 3: Collaborative weblog
projects (high-level, mixed language background)
Rationale
These combine the benefits of collaborative projects
in general with the benefits of online presentation of work as discussed
above. In these the final goal is a
single weblog that is devoted to an issue, and presents the combined efforts of
a group, whether it be in the form of written summaries of linked articles, interview
reports, collected links related to a subject, or even photographs taken and
uploaded, all contributed toward exploring a single topic.
Objectives
Students will
- Read an article about their issue and report to group members about
what they've read; and write a
short summary-response about the article they've read, and
- Create weblog as a group project, based on their issue or subject;
each student will put summary-response on that weblog and link their entry
to the article they've read (see above).
- Set up interview with local expert on subject; write questions;
interview expert, and provide report, both orally (to group members and/or
class) and on weblog.
- Work with partners to improve overall image of weblog, so that, as
a weblog that presents many perspectives on a single issue, it presents
itself well, and explains what it attempts to do.
Materials
and teaching aids
As above, each student should have access to a
computer with Internet connection.
Teacher should have computer with Internet hookup and possibly a
projector to show students how to proceed through steps. As above, teacher
should set up model class webpage, remembering logon, password, and URL for
future reference, and becoming familiar with process. Some hardware/browser combinations present problems; teacher
should work through problems before starting.
This particular project is ideal for situations when
fewer computers are available than there are students, because students can
work together to create one weblog, and do not have to be all uploading at the
same time. Work can be spaced so that
limited access to computers is provided as each group is ready; others can be
reading, writing/rewriting, or interviewing while some are uploading, editing,
or adding links.
Possible problems
The traditional complaint about groups, that some lazy
students may take advantage of harder-working ones, can be alleviated by
grading individual entries. One of the
advantages of groups is that the more Web-savvy students can help and even
teach the novice ones; thus the weakness or slowness of the novice is not
necessarily a burden to the group.
Groups are known to lose their logon or password, or to have the main
webmaster drop out of the class, leaving everyone in the lurch; these problems
also can be alleviated with planning if they are foreseen.
As stated above, plagiarism is always a problem with
student work and must be guarded against vigorously, as the work is published
and may be read by anyone. The temptation for students will be to make their
site prettier in any way they can; lifting of pictures without permission
presents a big problem and must be dealt with squarely in the classroom.
Classes #1-5: the setup, the action, the display
The teacher's job here is to do some of the legwork
to know whether certain issues will pan out in terms of having a variety of
articles that students can read, or sites they can visit and comment on;
whether there are local experts in the field, or if something is enough of an
issue in a community that people are willing to talk about it and give varying
opinions. We have done weblogs on a
variety of issues but invariably the students have been given some choice and
have done their work on a subject that all liked or at least agreed to
pursue. Choices were provided at
first. Higher level students can find
their own articles, but these must be provided for lower level students.
Students should have something to say before using
the "Create Post" function, but they will soon get used to doing
reading, interviews, or whatever, and coming back, editing it, and posting it
to the weblog. The advantage really is
in other classmates and groupmates being able to have access to the material,
once it is posted. This is particularly
useful for survey reports; if the group has asked many people a certain bank of
questions, results can be posted to the weblog and then commented on as wished,
later, by individual group members. The
group weblog thus provides the group an online meeting place that not only
collects and organizes their work, but also displays it to the public as a
final step. Students should be familiar
with setting up weblogs, creating posts, linking them, etc. (see above).
Timing
Collaborative projects are spread over many classes
because students must do the work outside of class that is then reported on in
the weblogs. Uploading, editing,
linking and improving weblogs is an ongoing project that may take ten minutes
per class of many separate classes, or could be accomplished in a single longer
block, given that the content to be uploaded is prepared beforehand.
