Using Blogs in the Spanish Classroom
Technology can be both frightening and exciting. It touches every area of our lives and changes in the blink of an eye. As a Spanish teacher, my use of technology in the classroom has been limited. Its use often involved bringing a laptop or radio to class to introduce students to authentic Spanish music, review grammatical concepts using YouTube videos or listen to Spanish dialogues. My mindset over the past two weeks has shifted significantly. Formal introduction to Web 2.0 technology has enabled me to identify the various strategies that I can employ to integrate technology into my classroom effectively. Therefore, I intend to creatively integrate weblogs and Twitter into my teaching to build students' expressive (writing & speaking) skills in the foreign language. The following is a proposal for the use of Blogs in my form 4 (grade 10) Spanish class.
Proposal
Subject: Spanish
Grade Level: 10
Web 2.0 tool: Blogs
Process
I will guide each student in the creation of a blog using the Kidblog platform. The blogs will be used as a portfolio to document students' expressive pieces. These pieces will take the form of prose, comic strip, dialogue, video, or any other appropriate forms of expression in the target language. Students will be given a broad topic biweekly and will decide how to represent aspects of that topic on their blogs. For example, given the subject of family, students may choose to write an essay/letter, create a comic strip, or create a video all speaking about their families. They will also be allowed to work collaboratively, specifically for oral presentations, but must post the product of this collaboration to their blogs. Students will be required to post every first and third Monday of the month and will comment on the work of at least three other students throughout the two weeks after posting. I will make regular contributions to each blog, giving commendations and corrections where necessary.
Rationale
The chief complaint I have had as a
teacher is that of limited time. It just seems that there is never enough time
to engage students in writing, reading and speaking Spanish with much
frequency. Additionally, the CSEC Modern Language Curriculum is heavily focused
on grammar acquisition towards oral and written production. Therefore, I spend
more time teaching rather than using the grammatical concepts needed for
language acquisition. I hope that the use of blogs will encourage interaction
and more frequent production of oral and written pieces that will help students
sharpen their language skills.
According to their research, Fernette and Brock Eide (2005, as cited in Richards, 2010) posit that blogs promote critical, analytical, creative, intuitive, and analogical thinking, expose students to quality information, and allow students to exercise quiet reflection while maintaining a social presence. Therefore, through regular engagement with their classmates and constructive feedback from students and the teacher, I anticipate that the students will sharpen their writing skills in the foreign language. Vurdien (2013) researched to determine the effectiveness of blogs in improving the writing abilities of 11 students enrolled at a language school in Spain. The study found that the use of blogs can raise students' motivation to write and provided the opportunities for improving linguistic performance (Vurdien, 2012). This improvement was linked to students' consciousness that the writing produced for the blog would be viewed by and critiqued by their peers. This was also the case in a study by Hutchison and Wang (2012). The study, done among preservice teachers, found that participants were more thoughtful in generating responses, knowing that their peers would read their work. Though much of the research is focused on acquiring English writing skills, I anticipate that the strategies used in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) class will be just as beneficial in my Spanish class.
International Society
for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards
Students
Engaging students in
blogs will inevitably equip them with the skills needed to function within the
21st-century classroom and beyond effectively. The standards presented by the
International Society for Technology in Education (2016a) is a guiding light for
teachers and students as they exist and work within this technological era.
Based on these standards, I believe that engaging my students in blogging will
aid them in choosing the platform or tool that will help them meet objectives
for creating the blog. Additionally, engaging in this activity will allow
students to develop the skills needed to become responsible cyber citizens who
positively and responsibly contribute to their online communities and maintain
safe practices while engaging others online.
Teachers
There are also expectations of teachers as they seek to integrate technology into the classroom. Based on the International Society for Technology in Education (2016b) standards for teachers, engaging in this activity with my students will enable me to create a space for my students where they can responsibly and positively contribute to an online community, as well as build relationships with other students within this community. Despite its popularity within education and beyond, blogging is relatively new to me. Therefore, by engaging in this activity with my students, I am challenging myself to sharpen my technological skills to use them in my classroom effectively. This action falls in line with the ISTE standard, outlining teachers' need to be lifelong learners who seek to explore and apply new pedagogical approaches facilitated by technology.
Technology has the
potential to alter the trajectory of the foreign language classroom
significantly. For many years I have struggled to balance meeting curriculum
deadlines while attempting to give my students an authentic experience within
the Spanish classroom. I must admit that I have often sacrificed these
authentic experiences for the sake of meeting deadlines and preparing students
to take exams. However, I hope that the integration of resources such as blogs
will enable me to find that balance, giving my students the best of both
worlds.
References
Hutchison, A.,
& Wang, W. (2012). Blogging within a social networking site as a form of
literature
response in a teacher education course. Educational Media International, 49(4),
263–275. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1080/09523987.2012.741197
International
Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). (2016a). ISTE standards for students.
Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/standards/for-students
International
Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). (2016b). ISTE standards for educators.
Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/standards/for-educators
Richardson,
W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for
classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Vurdien, R. (2013). Enhancing Writing Skills
through Blogging in an Advanced English as a Foreign Language Class in Spain. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 26(2), 126–143.
Hi Sharon,
ReplyDeleteThe integration of blogs into a spanish classroom could be extremely beneficial in enhancing the quality of education for your students. I have never taught a language based course but I have taken a plethora of different spanish courses throughout my educational career. I still have never mastered spanish in the slightest!
From my prior knowledge I know in language courses the time available to practice the language is usually miniscule do to the amount of time used for introducing new content. There is a lot of content that must be understood in order to practice a language! I believe a blog would allow students to practice the spanish language in a self paced environment. In your post you discussed how students would be required to comment and post by certain times throughout the week. This is a great way to keep students on track, and keep assignments orderly. Although I am a supporter of an organized classroom, and clear guidelines for my students, I foresee the use of the blog becoming mundane to the students because they will focus more on receiving a high grade and less on practicing their language skills.
I recommend that you encourage students to post and comment using their blogs as much as possible, while of course only using the spanish language. I anticipate students becoming more engaged reading what their peers have written, spoken, or created in the spanish language rather than a scripted article or textbook. I predict that students will become more engaged and interested in the language when they are writing or speaking because they know they are publishing their work to an audience versus only the educator. I believe students would eventually become self motivated once they notice their proficiency in the spanish language increases (Dosch & Ingwalson, 2010).
Since there are always students who are shy or self conscious which could possibly lead to students not posting as frequently, I also recommend creating a document that has topics they can choose to create a post from. From personal experience I know that I would find this beneficial in a language classroom!
References
Dosch, J., & Ingwalson, G. (2010). Should We Continue Space Travel? A Technology-Supported Approach to Engaging Students. Science Scope, 33(9), 39–44.
DeleteHi there, thank you for your contribution to my blog. I did not previously give thought to the potential for this activity becoming mundane. However, we sometimes take for granted students' affinity to technology because we see them engage so readily through online platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook. Engaging in this course has allowed me to understand that the standards for an educational blog is in its own way different from that of a personal blog. Therefore, students will be required to exert a little more effort in the preparation of their blog posts. It is with this in mind that I decided to add more structure to the assignment. However, you have given me a lot to think about, and I will ensure that I find balance between maintaining curriculum standards and facilitating students' independence.
Hi Sharon,
ReplyDeleteI am very excited to read about your idea to have your students create a blog. I think it may be a platform that they connect well with.
My primary concern with student blogs (for either of us!) is that it will create an unsustainable increase in our already full schedules. Creating extra content for and assignments for our students is a strain on our already limited resources. I am concerned that as effort shifts towards handling a blog/new technology, that some other part of a teacher’s performance may suffer.
A potential solution, which you may have thought of, is to double up the work wherever possible. When I create my blog for my students, I hope that the material and content that I am using for their regular class time can be rapidly republished via blog. Additionally, rather than adding additional assignments, traditional writing assignments can be moved online. I suggest we attempt to plan well and work smart from the start to avoid burnout or failure to meet goals.
I am also in the Caribbean and in the language learning industry and so I am extra excited to see how your blogs develop!
Hello fellow islander. Welcome to my virtual space. I share your sentiments and concerns. I know an undertaking like this is not going to be an easy one. Many of my students do not have reliable access to the internet or a device.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, despite their affinity to social media sites, students would need to be trained and guided in the use of blogs. However, I am confident that once we overcome these initial hurdles, the benefits to my classroom would be endless. I appreciate your suggestions and will most definitely consider them when planning for the use of blogs with my students. I will keep you updated on my progress.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteValerie 6710j
ReplyDeleteHi Sharon,
I really enjoyed reading your blog and how you plan to incorporate blogging into your classroom. Creating a blog provides an opportunity for a connection for students between their digital world and what is being asked of them academically, for example, in essays and projects. Many instructors have commented on how amazed they are about the quality of the writing and analytical thinking when students have the opportunity to use blogging as a medium (LSA, n.d.) Richardson (2010) points out that blogging across the curriculum offers students and teachers not only the ability to infuse writing into all disciplines, it facilitates connections in ways that plain paper cannot. For example, on Twitter, there are a number of posts about teachers using the Picturing writing: Fostering Literacy through art approach; where students are involved in making images as part of the writing process (picturingwriting.org) (McDonough, 2020).
I also thought it was awesome how you carved out a space for students voices to be heard in terms of them making choices on how they will experience blogging. Might I suggest starting off small. Have students to read blogs of their peers. Perhaps create a list of Weblogs, related to the class content, that could be view as a class or share the blogs you have created. Models are important to guide students through the process. You could also create a class blog and have students respond. In my class, we use what I coined the Scholar class parking lot. It is very similar to a blog. To get my students familiar with the process, I posted a question each day that I wanted them to think about and discuss after school via TEAMS. During the week, they had to make a certain number of responses to the questions. I also modeled what the expectations were for those responses beforehand. My students, in most cases, went and go beyond the required number of responses. It gives them the opportunity to experience public writing in a safe way and to master the process of posting to our class parking lot and build their confidence in sharing their authentic thoughts. This prepares them for their interaction with social media platforms. The benefit for me is paperless classroom. Hers is a link that you might find useful for classroom blog samples: https://www.theedublogger.com/check-out-these-class-blogs/. I hope these suggestions are useful.
References
McDonough, S. (2020). Building connections. Practical Literacy: The Early & Primary Years,
25(2), 46.46
LSA. (n.d).Using Blogs in the Classroom
https://lsa.umich.edu/sweetland/instructors/teaching-resources/using-blogs-in-the-classroom.html#:~:text=Blogging%20can%20improve%20students'%20writing,and%20powerful%20understanding%20of%20audience.
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for
classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oak, CA: Corwin