Blogs as an ICT Tool for Teaching

Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 tools have been useful in the passing, sharing and creation of information since the Internet was established back in the 90’s. Being a social media like Facebook or Twitter, a cloud service like Soundcloud or Dropbox or a video uploader webpage like Youtube or Tubeplus we can let people from around the world our points of view about a certain topic, show a new creation, recipe, song or whatever you do. One of the most used tools in the Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 world are Web-blogs, or commonly known as Blogs. Blogs are like personal logs that people can post on the web and share it to the whole wide world. Since their creation, blogs have been a staple in both Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Blogs not only are used for personal thoughts, or opinions, nowadays we can see through the web many different blogs, cooking blogs, travelling blogs, music blogs and even literary blogs. You might be wondering, "Where can I start my blog?" Well there are many ways where you can start a blog, one way is through blogger (this webpage for example). Other ways are Wordpress, Tumblr or even in Facebook you can carry a blog. Even though, the concept of video blogging have been established through Youtube, the blogs have remained still becoming one of the most used tools by Internet users.

But, how can I use blogs as a teaching tool? The answer is quite simple. For those who have read my previous post on ICT and its uses in teaching, you can see that blogs can become quite a tool on your classrooms. Imagine yourself that you want to make a reading comprehension activity but you don’t want to print 25, 35 or 50 copies of a reading for your classroom. Instead you can post the reading on your school blog for your students to read and also post, either questions regarding the reading or you can create a forum discussion for them to post their opinions or thoughts. Let’s say that instead of a reading comprehension activity, you want to make a listening comprehension activity, you can opt for posting a video or a song (it can be with the lyrics in order to evaluate both reading and listening comprehension) and you can post a series of questions regarding the video or song that you posted. One of the ideas that I'm going to put on next year for my students is for them to carry and administer a blog of their own. By having this, I, as a teacher, I can evaluate and asses the student’s writing skills and their use of grammar, vocabulary taught in class. With the use of personal blogs, students can learn a second language by expressing themselves, letting them use their favorite topics or things, but having some limitations in order for the teacher to correctly asses or evaluate. As you can see my fellow readers, blogs are an awesome tool for you teachers to use, I invite you all to use them and have good time! Over and out.