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Writing to blog, blogging to write

A blog, which is a Computer-Mediated Communication tool, allows people to publish their thoughts, ideas, daily life events, etc. in a form of regular entries on a web page. They are generally divided into three columns from which the middle one is occupied by the texts produced by a blog owner, and on both sides, we can fi nd archives, blogrolls – links to blogs written by other people, links to resources or websites the author fi nds interesting, lists of various categories, etc.

What makes blogs special, apart from the possibility of revealing private thoughts to the public, is the chance of interaction with the readers by receiving the comments on the issues published on a blog. The comments may become an essential part of blogging, leading to the discussion and the exchange of opinions, giving the writer satisfaction of being read and discussed. Moreover, modern technology lets the users insert into their blogs not only the photos but also audio and video fi les. This makes the whole process of blog creation and its content multimedia and as such, more motivating for its participants.

Outdoor lessons open up a possibility to start fresh. Throughout the school year or during a holiday course, we might encounter problems where students fail to cooperate to a desired degree. These problems might include disruptive behaviour of any sort, general lack of motivation, unwillingness to speak English, or reluctance to take active part in the activities we have planned. Before you work out a long-term plan how to avoid similar situations, surprise your students. Go outside, re-establish rules, and offer a selection of completely diff erent activities which will engage the children fully.

Surfi ng the net, I spotted diff erent blogs, from the pathetic blogs of politicians, through the photo blogs presenting the produce of talented home-grown nail tips designers, to the blogs for adults only. Thus classifying them, Krajka (2007), after Wrede (2003), enumerates tens of more serious narrative forms of weblog posts, various weblog types by content and by technical characteristics. Nevertheless, the teachers are more interested in blogs related to education and known as edublogs (Dudeney & Hocky, 2007), which again can be defi ned as class, tutor, and student blogs.

The tutor blog is the one set up by a teacher for her/his learners to provide them with reading practice, either by publishing reading texts or guiding the learners to external sites containing interesting material. It can also serve as a place to publish tasks for the classes, syllabuses, and all the material for self-study (Krajka, 2007).

The student or learner blog is aimed at supplying the students with fora for individual expression in writing both in the form of posts and/or commentaries. The class blog with entries of all the students being the result of collaboration over projects, homework assignments is a place for discussion and a medium for developing writing skills. Blogs are called an example of social software (Dudeney & Hocky, 2007) characterized by the following features: blogs can be initiated and conducted by teachers or/and learners, they can connect communities of learners, and their content can be created by both teachers

The story itself
After every unit in the course books my students use, there is a writing assignment, ranging from writing a short description of a person, through composing a CV, to creating a short story, and so on. Even though the tasks are quite interesting, the whole writing process seems to be boring for my students. Their products, carefully corrected by me, inevitably end in my fi les covered by dust. I feel my eff orts to encourage young people to write come to nothing, as anyone cannot see any continuity and there is no documented trace of development that could be seen, read, and appreciated. Thus the idea of using blogs to publish and collect writing works of my students, illustrating the texts with photos, clip arts, and video fi les to create a kind of portfolio of our mutual eff orts. Such an e-portfolio gives the opportunity of seeing the works of other students and comparing them with one’s own, developing self-assessment skills, and gaining an inspiration from the ideas of the other blog users. I started up a blog for the class 1st F of secondary school in November 2009 on www.wordpress.com; I registered myself as an administrator and created a site. Being an administrator gives me the possibility of controlling the content and intervening if the cooperate over one blog (the class blog), they had to log in and register to allow me to enroll them to their new class blog. The technical details of setting up a blog on www.wordpress.com you can fi nd on http://www.alicjawujeckaczmarek.edu.pl in a form of PowerPpoint presentation supplemented with instructions written in the notes section.

Then, there came a question of language choice, and the obvious thing was to ask students to write their works in English. Moreover, I decided to choose English as a language of so called ‘dashboard’ which is used to operate the blog. The objective was to make students try to understand and, hopefully, memorize the ICT vocabulary occurring there. At fi rst glance, you can see plenty of useful words like: appearance, update, contribute, insert, and many others.

Next, there was an obstacle to overcome, as in the very nature of blog is that the posts appear in a chronological order and can be seen in such or we can fi nd them in blog archives according to the months of publication. As I wanted to be able to follow the progress of my students without having to search through the whole blog, I worked out a simple answer whose technicalities you can fi nd again on http://www.alicjawujeckaczmarek.edu.pl as a PowerPoint presentation. To put it in a nutshell, I placed a term ‘categories’ on the blog, under which a reader can fi nd students’ fi rst names or nicknames and by clicking them, she/he can see all written assignments posted by a chosen student. In this way, a kind of order can be introduced into a messy blog form.

The blog’s aim was not only to document the learners’ work but additionally, by publishing their produce, to motivate and to make them feel responsible for the outcome. However, judging my students’ reactions, I can say that this type of motivation is at least ‘uncomfortable’ and evokes mixed feelings on their part. On the one hand, they keep repeating that their work is in vain as nobody is going to see their blog, but on the other hand, they feel under pressure and become more anxious and sensitive about making mistakes (at least most of them).

The issue of sensitivity to mistakes leads to the question of assessing the written assignment published on the class blog. As the intention was to encourage writing, I decided upon a bit controversial solution adjusting the method of assessment to an individual case. For those who crave for attention, I devote some time for discussing a fi nal draft and then assess the published version. However, those who are both brave and skillful enough to publish their works independently are given marks for fi nal work. The writing assignments can also be corrected online or simply printed and corrected in a paper form.

Blogging is meant to be not only the place to reveal secrets and profound thoughts about the end of the world but also to create two-way communication between the writer and the readers. In this case, the whole idea of commenting the entries has been neglected or rather reduced to one way ticket. So far, the students have been too preoccupied with the whole process of writing and discovering how the system works to make an eff ort of posting additional comments. I believe that while the blog is going to develop, the students will enjoy expressing their opinions in the form of commentaries. Nevertheless, as an administrator, I am able to handle unwanted comments deleting them or limiting the number of participants allowed to post them.

Writing texts in a foreign language to be published as well as coping with specialist English vocabulary, unknown blogging system, and for some participants, necessity to solve problems with ICT increased the need for support on the part of the students. In this situation, they fi rst turned to me for help; and then, the class cooperation came naturally. The students asked their peers for help, either those more skillful in English or those who managed the blog in a more effi cient way, thus working out collaboration as a result of a task given. Surprisingly, they also turned a bit jealous about the possibility of setting up blogs by other learners’ groups and proud they are able to handle such an exceptional and demanding task from language and technological points.

Next is the question of privacy, which is important while writing the texts but even more delicate as far as photos are concerned. The policy is that adult students decide themselves whether they want to show more or less private images and the minors are supposed to ask their parents for permission. Just to give an example, during an exercise: ‘describe and illustrate your favourite photo’, some of the students decided to show their faces. For another exercise: ‘describe and illustrate your favorite place,’ some presented public buildings while others inserted the photos of their private rooms.

The procedure of introducing blogs into a teaching process can be relatively simple. As the teachers are usually busy realizing secondary school curriculum, they cannot aff ord to spend too much time doing writing exercises during their classes. Now, they can devote one or two lessons to register the bloggers and show them how the system works. And then, the students can individually or in pairs do the fi rst simple assignment, for example, preparing a short introductory text plus inserting an image. Later, the teacher gives the students fi rst homework and checks the class blog after a couple of days, subsequently spending some time during the lessons to answer all the resultant questions. After next few days, the teacher checks up the blog and assesses students’ works and gives another homework; the story continues till the end of school.

Blog examples and tasks So far, my students have done the following exercises and published them on the blog. The tasks are based on the writing exercises taken from New English File Pre-intermediate and Intermediate and on my own ideas.

1. Write a short text about your favourite photo and publish your text and the photo on your class blog.
2. Write an informal letter to Mrs. XYZ, thank her for her letter, say when you are arriving, answer her questions. Use appropriate phrases ( Dear …, Best wishes, Looking forward to hearing from you) and publish the letter on the class blog. Describe the place where you live and illustrate the text with the photos taken there.
3. Describe the place where you live and illustrate the text with the photos taken there.
4. Write briefl y about your favourite sport and fi nd suitable pictures. Publish the material on the class blog.
5. Find on the Internet a language school in Great Britain and read its off er. Write a formal e-mail asking for information you need. You can use a sample e-mail in your course book. Publish a printscreen of your e-mail and the logo of the school.
6. Write a short story in fi rst conditional. For example: If I don’t learn English, I won’t fi nd a good job. If I don’t fi nd a good job, … . Publish your story. Find on the Internet the examples of Murphy’s Laws. Choose the ones you like the best and publish them. You can try to translate the chosen ones.
7. Imagine you are an estate agent and you want to sell a house, an apartment, or a hotel. Write a text advertising the place, illustrate it with the suitable pictures, and publish on the class blog.
8. Write a CV for an imaginary person. Follow an example from your course book, publish it on the blog, and add a photo suitable for a formal situation.
9. Interview a guest from a Polish-German school exchange. Make notes and then publish your conversation either in the form of an actual interview or in a form of a summary. Insert the photo of your guest and all interviewers on the blog.
10. Find information about the Beatles, choose the most important items, and write a couple of sentences about the group. Find your favourite lyrics of the group, a photo and publish on the class blog. Remember about documenting the sources.
11. Choose one of the names of famous politicians from English speaking countries (Richard Nixon, Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, etc.), fi nd info about the person and write a short biography, fi nd a photo and/or a fragment of public speech, and publish your fi ndings on the class blog.
12. Write in English about your favourite musical instrument, fi nd its photo and a fragment of a concert or tune, and publish the materials on the class blog. Be careful about respecting copyrights.
13. Write a review of the fi lm you like the best. Include full information about the fi lm: 1. the name of the director, when and in what circumstances it was created, when and where you saw it; 2. give short info about the content (a summary of the plot, the presentation of main characters, a list of problems occurring in the fi lm); 3. assess various aspects of the fi lm (the plot, director’s work, actors’ performance, fi lm set, music); 4. recommend or advise against watching it explaining your reasons. You can also publish the photos, posters, or video fi les connected with the fi lm but do not forget about documenting the sources!
14. Publish regular comments on current aff airs on your class blog. For example, once a week, fi nd an interesting event and write a short text summing it up.

Every week, my students and I come up with new ideas and new exercises are done and published on the blogs; thus, I invite you to visit them regularly to see the eff ects of our both hard and entertaining work. The class blogs being expanded at the moment:

1. 1 F’s Blog is a place where students publish their written homework together with the photos illustrating it. This blog, which was set up in November 2009, and all the issues that emerged during collaborative work over it are described in the below article: http://class1f. wordpress.com.
2. Cheese Business Blog was started as a writing practice site; but now, it is being prepared to serve a webquest purpose: http://cheesebusiness. wordpress.com.
3. Intermediate’s Blog serves a diff erent purpose; created as a forum for writing, it became a site where the NKJO students of German publish and address the questions that arise during the classes. Thus, at the moment, it is rather a site containing interesting information about English speaking countries, their culture, arts, music, politics and about various, sometimes unexpected aspects of life: http://niskosredniozaawansowani.wordpress.com.
4. London Project Blog serves as a site where the students are developing the project. In spring 2010, they are going on a trip to London, and 50 students (divided into groups) collect information about assigned topics connected with the city (e.g., history of the city, its monuments, districts, etc.), illustrating them with images, photos, maps, etc., and put them into their blog: http://londonproject.wordpress.com

The class blog story has been developing for six months now, and my intention is to keep it going till the end of 1F’s school adventure. So far, I have managed to overcome my students’ natural human reaction to a change, and they have become quite skillful in operating the class blog. In a couple of months, I am going to undertake some steps to assess my students’ attitude to this form of writing connected with publishing and investigate if their process of writing aiming at being published differs from the way students who have ‘regular’ writing assignments write their texts. I would also like to check how technology fear and language fear mutually influence each other. I do believe this little effort to run a class blog pays, and I hope future research on this group of students will confirm it.

Alicja Wujec Kaczmarek

References
-Dudeney, G. & Hockly, N. (2007). How to Teach English with Technology. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
-Krajka, J. (2007). English Language Teaching in the Internet-assisted Environment. Issues in the Use of the Web as a Teaching Medium. Lublin: Maria Curie- Skłodowska University Press.

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