A blogging project with my tourism students

What follows is a sketch of a blogging project I prepared these past few weeks. My students are in their second year at the College of Tourism, their English is on CEF B2 and they are twenty years old.

Aims of the English course

• help students discover the culture of the disciplinary community they are going to belong oneday by guiding them through a number of different professional genres (reports, news, articles,abstracts, etc.);
• encourage students to read professional texts in the field of tourism and develop their reading skills;
• encourage students to engage in simple professional writing and learn to take notes, describe and define simple tourism related phenomena, summarize, compare views, write short reports, etc.;
• encourage students to engage in discussions of tourism related issues, share summaries of articles they have read, present their views, etc.;
• encourage students to enlarge their professional vocabulary and deepen their knowledge of words;
• help students become autonomous learners of English.

Blogging project outline
I expect my blog will guide my students through the activities that are designed mainly as homework. I am planning to spend two sessions (90 minutes each) in the computer lab and help students to create their individual blogs and a class blog which will feature their recommendations, annotated lists of links to useful / good tourism-related Internet sites and posts they would like to share with the rest of the class. At the end of the semester students will be able to print out a selection of posts they have written and comments they have sent to their mates and include these in their assessment portfolios. I will then discuss these with them during the oral exam.

The assessment portfolios were planned for this academic year and the students were informed about them during our first meeting in October. Blogging will introduce change our plans only slightly: students will send their homework to their blogs instead of placing it in a folder, and they will read their mates’ blogs and comment them (peer review is believed to be very efficient). I have decided to add a few writing activities that have nothing to do with tourism to encourage their creativity (I slightly adjusted the Proust questions - Lesley thank you very much for the idea, and will also ask students to post the photo of a mug and its story - thank you, Sergei, for the idea, review the blog of an American journalist living in Slovenia and share their reactions to a poem).

Assessment
I decided to regard blogging as a tool for developing students’ professional English, so blogs will act as an aid to the learning process. I will regularly use a short self-assessment questionnaire to raise students’ awareness of the learning process and help them to focus on the quality of their own involvement (their contribution to the learning process and personal growth). Students’ self-assessment will also serve as feedback to me (it will help me to introduce possible modifications to my blogging projects in the future).
Only a selection of products (individual posts) will be assessed together with their presentation / discussion at the oral exam.

The end of the sixth week Or Blogs and self-development of teachers

I remember reading a book by Julian Edge way back in the 1990s on cooperative professional development. He suggested an alternative approach that teachers could use with the help of a colleague. Self-observation and reflection played key roles in the teacher’s professional development process that led to action and growth. The colleague’s role was lending an ear and helping the teacher to focus.

Blogs can easily be used as journals in which we reflect on our teaching practice. It is easier to reflect on what is going on when we write. Writing helps us to focus better and build our awareness: it helps us to discover more about the situation and about ourselves. As long as it is taken seriously, reflection truly leads to action, learning and growth. Our blogs are plain evidence for this. Blogs are a great tool for any teacher who is commited to professional growth.

But there is a difference: the colleague’s place is taken by a community of teachers who also blog and share ideas, reflections and reactions. And who are also committed to professional growth. And believe me, that feels a whole lot better.

Dear Bee, Aaron and Graham, dear colleague bloggers. These past six weeks were wild! The experience is unsurpassed in intensity of learning, reflection, action and professional growth! Thank you for sharing it with me. Let this be just an end of week six and tomorrow week seven will start.

P.S.
He who has never blogged will blog tomorrow, and he who has blogged will also blog tomorrow.

Audioblogs in ESP

Joel raised an interesting question yesterday when he asked why people choose to use audio files and whether they would include different things in the audio file than they might if they had written the text out instead.

Nathan suggested that ”the decision to use audio has to do with determining whether there is a legitimate message to be made that extends beyond the mere text of the piece. If a transcript carries the message, there is no reason for audio.” He also sees timing, tonality and dialect as the major advantages of audio files over texts.

Tom agreed and added a link to an article on digital storytelling. It describes the various uses of digital storytelling in education. Basically, this is what happens: students record their personal stories, then they mix the recording with drawings, photos and music and the end product seems to be a multimedia presentation. Bonds between people are strengthened as a result, students master a new self-expression and may even gain in self-respect. It sounds great, but I’m not so sure of the value of such activities in the EFL/ESP class (at least not on tertiary level).

John then came up with more ideas: students could listen to themselves from the archives or they could run an Internet radio. Both ideas are good.

However, I think Lesley was the one who started to streamline our ideas towards EFL matters by raising the issue of our teaching aims. She said that in ESL classes we are “preparing people for real life situations in which they might not have any textual/visual input.” I couldn’t agree more.

Aaron then stressed that the purpose of the site will affect our choice and suggested that “the potential to bring the myriad spoken voices of the world into the classroom itself, both synchronously and asynchronously, adds an exciting dimension to the learning activities that occur there.“ True.

I keep thinking of my own students and I'd like to suggest another possible use of audio files which may help to enhance learning a foreign language. Students who learn EFL at tertiary institutions tend to focus on English used in their future professions, i.e. ESP (at least in Continental Europe). They have to rely on written sources of information most of the time (especially on levels B2 and onward). The reason is very simple: radio stations and television channels, which often serve as great input source, rarely feature programmes for professionals. Do you remember the number of things we need to learn about new words before we really know them? ESP students can find the meaning of professional words in glossaries or even encyclopedias, they can see how words are used in context and learn their forms and their collocates, however, they may have great difficulties finding out how these same words are pronounced. Encyclopedias, glossaries and terminology dictionaries don’t provide pronunciation information. English dictionaries for advanced learners provide pronunciation information, but unfortunately tend to exclude highly specialized words. Teachers could help, but students rarely approach us with questions about pronunciation. Hearing the new words in class a couple of times is usually not enough for students to remember them later when they want to use them independently in a discussion of a professional issue.

I see audio files as a teacher’s opportunity to provide audio resources that can help students improve their pronunciation of discipline-related words as well as their listening comprehension skills for professional purposes. And it’s definitely an advantage if the passage (short news items, short reports, interviews with professionals, etc.) is read by a native speaker of English. I can easily envisage pronunciation exercises as well, for example, the type that requires students to match the words they hear to the list of written words. However, I agree wholeheartedly that we have to follow the rules of sound material design as
well as the aims of the curriculum.

I don’t think digital storytelling of students’ personal experiences would solve the problem. However, recording the summary of the professional articles the students have read seems to fit into ESP more easily.

Lesley also raised the question of why we would include an audio file in a blog rather than on a web page. I can think of a number of reasons. First, a blog is easier to maintain: the teacher is in charge of the blog and does not need to contact a third party to alter it (at the college where I work I cannot alter my webpage whenever I want - I need to contact the person in charge of the college’s IT system first and put up with his moody nature. Sometimes it takes days before the new webpage is uploaded).

Next, comments are not something web pages allow us to incorporate easily, but they are common in blogs. They open up the space for a dialogue with our students or dialogue between students. Students can add their own comments to what they’ve heard based on their own readings and knowledge and this could add new dimensions to an audio file: a different point of view, a comment in a different (written) medium of communication, etc. However, I’m sure many of my students would be equally happy with a web page that would provide only listening comprehension and pronunciation activities without the comment sending facility.

All in all, the decision to include audio posts in EFL/ESP blogs (or web pages) should be based on our students’ needs (learner and future professional) and the audio activities adjusted to the aims of the curriculum that we want to achieve.

Photoblog post: My family's summer holiday

Move the cursor over the pictures to learn about my family's holiday.



Now it's your turn. Tell us about your summer holiday. :-)

P.S.
Sorry, this seems to work only in Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Audblog entry: The latest news from Russia

Listen to the recording and indicate whether the statements below are true (T) or false (F).
You can listen to the recording twice. ;-)

1 Orient-Express has invested in a hotel in the centre of St. Petersburg.
2 The Grand Hotel Europe is of the same size as the Ritz in Madrid.
3 Orient-Express is planning to buy the Ritz in Madrid too.
4 The number of business people wanting to stay in a luxury hotel in St. Petersburg will grow.
5 In summer, the guests in the Grand Hotel Europe will be tourists.

Tulips in my garden last spring

This photo was taken with my husband's new digital camera last spring. I must say that I prefer my old Olympus - it feels more comfortable. The photo reminds me of spring. Soon the almond trees will start to bloom and in no time I will be able to enjoy my cup of coffee on my terrace. Carnival time is over. It is time for spring to come.

This and that

I found Elderbob's post from the other day a little disturbing. I have a feeling that he wants to protect both blogs and kids, which is nice and cute as I'm sure he likes them both. That's something only a caring person would do. I understand and respect that. On the other hand, this also implies that both blogs and kids need to be protected from some sort of danger (an overenthusiastic teacher?). I'm not sure I understand this.

I see blogs both as a tool in foreign language teaching and as a means of self-expression. However, it is clear to me that self-expression is something I can control only if the blog is mine. I don't want to make bloggers out of my students (that's definitely not on my agenda). They'll become one if they want to and when they want to. They'll express themselves through blogs only if this method of self-expression suits them. And this has little to do with me. It'll be their choice. I don't think potential bloggers would start hating blogs just because their teacher sets blog writing as a requirement. I'm pretty sure potential bloggers would grab blog writing as an opportunity and sooner or later open an account of their own. Perhaps they'd stop writing after a month or a year, perhaps not. But they'd surely blog until they felt the need for that. As a teacher I can't change that. I don't even want to.

Take our group as an example. I'm personally not sure that I'm a blogger. I hated the idea of keeping a blog in the beginning of this course (and I know from other participants' posts that I'm not alone). It reminded me of the times when I kept a personal diary. Those times are long gone, my life and self-expression have changed. Why would I take up something I've given up? But I'm still hanging around - writing comments to unknown people (whom I'm getting to know slowly through their blogs and comments). At first I posted to my blog only because our tutors required it from course participants. I followed their instructions because I knew I had to trust them: either you blog or you never find out what blogging is about. And now after three weeks I feel that I'm not lost in the blogosphere any more, on the contrary, I'm slowly finding my place and my voice thanks to our tutors, guests and fellow course participants although blogging is far from being the only means of self-expression that I'm capable of, that I use or that I find satisfying. I suspect this change is the result of my increasing awareness of what blogging involves both knowledge-wise and community-wise.

I also think of blogging as a possible tool for improving my students reading and writing skills in English. It won't suit everybody, I know. However, that won't stop me from using blogs in my teaching. I also know that there's no perfect teaching tool that would suit every child. Let me illustrate this. Kids don't like grammar. Fine, does that stop us from teaching it or from raising their awareness about it? My children don't like vegetables. Should I stop offering them vegetable dishes? Why would we do only what we like or what suits us? It may sound awful to some people but teaching is not just knowledge transfer. It's also socialization: learning what we like and what we don't, what's proper and what's not, the various opportunities that are out there, the obligations, responsibilities, perseverance, etc. The only thing wrong would be if we kept giving our children vegetable dishes and nothing else, teaching only grammar in EFL classes or teaching English only by writing a blog. But we are not doing that, are we? I don't remember anybody saying we should. Equally wrong would be giving up a teaching tool only because some of the kids didn't immediately take to it.

If we decided to use blog writing in our classes, we would do that only because we believed it would enhance our students' reading or writing skills. If the students learnt to like it, fine. If not, they'd know they'd tried it but it wasn't their cup of tea and they'd stop the moment the school year was over. Fair enough. Knowing what you don't like is just as important as knowing what you like. Hopefully, by then they would have improved their reading and writing skills, whether they wanted it or not.

Blue Guitars, Jars and Plums

I was reading participants' blogs in Bloglines when I came upon a link to Hector J. Vila's blog, went onward to the Artswriting Experiments blog at Middlebury College and came across Wallace Stevens' "Man with the Blue Guitar". It immediately reminded me of the times I spent at the University of Ljubljana, of Dr Reagan and Dr Peck, who were enthusiastically broadening our horizons with American poetry.
It also reminded me of another poem - William Carlos Williams' "This is just to say". For years I read these poems to every new generation of secondary school students and invariably got a very positive response from them. My goodness, why did I stop?
Can teaching ESP involve writing short comments on poetry?

A Comparison of Blog Providers

I chose three providers of free blogs: Blog-City, LiveJournal and Bravenet. At first I also considered including Free ESL-Blogs, but I found their blogs too simplistic and therefore dropped this provider. I opened accounts with these providers and created the following blogs:
http://sarolta.blog-city.com/, http://www.livejournal.com/users/sarolta_gv/ and
http://sarolta.bravejournal.com/.
Setting up the accounts with the providers was not too difficult. However, I do prefer Blogger`s user-friendliness in three steps.
From experience I know that my students tend to have difficulties with setting the language of their documents and using a spell-checker. Therefore a spell-checking facility would need to be provided. Unfortunately, beside Blogger only LiveJournal provides this facility. Does that mean the others do not care? Perhaps their customers spell their words correctly.
Editing your entry is important. Students may want to change their posts, correct a mistake they notice after the post was published, etc. However, you cannot edit your posts in Blog-City - at least I could not find the way to do it.
All companies provide options for adjusting the template of your blog to your likes: Bravenet offers the widest option. Among other extra facilities they also offer the facility to incorporate your photos in the blog, including images, lines and tables in your posts. However, a Bravenet blog comes with a package: the blog is packed with advertisements for free Bravenet products. I could not get rid of them. They are distracting the reader from the blog`s contents.
A calendar is included in Blog-City and LiveJournal blogs. Getting one free with Bravenet should not be a problem as it is widely advertised. Getting one in Blogger though seems to be a problem.
Both LiveJournal and Bravenet provide information on and services for your friends. They seem to be more suitable for the journal type of blogs, especially as they provide either descriptions of your mood or smilies that symbolize the way you feel when you are writing. Many a journal writer would definitely appreciate that, I guess.
Blog-City posts could not be written with my Netscape. They seem to prefer Microsoft Explorer. However, they provide simple statistics on visitor traffic, which is nice.
All in all, this was a healthy exercise. It helped me learn about some of the other free blog providers and appreciate the user-friendliness of Blogger even more.