Reflections on ten years of blogging - part two

"When thinking about technology and society there is a natural tendency to look forwards rather than backwards. Like in many other areas of life, it is often more compelling to anticipate what is about to happen with technology than attempt to make sense of what has already happened." 
     Neil Selwyn, Education and Technology: Key Issues and Debates, 2011

Following on from part one of my reflections in my tenth year of blogging, here are ten observations about blogging in ELT. The last post concentrated on some of my recollections from the time when I started blogging. This post is about conclusions I've come to about blogging with English language students. Back in 2005, I remember telling someone that I was facilitating a 6-week online course on blogging for ELT, and he was surprised that anyone could spend so much time just on blogging, but, there's a lot to blogging with learners, and unless you think carefully about it, then your blogging project is not likely to be very successful.

1. Starting is easy. Starting a blogging project with learners is easy to do, so long as you're careful not to overstretch yourself. If you don't have much time or experience, then set up a class blog (see Blogging for ELT for an explanation of types of blogs), but you should understand that this won't be as effective for encouraging learners to write than individual learner blogs. If your learners each have blogs, then you'll be busier, though. A good compromise is to divide your learners into groups of three or four and set up a blog for each group. This is particularly valuable if your focus is on process writing (see 2 below).

2. Think it through. Why have you decided to encourage your learners to blog? Blogging can be a very effective way of encouraging process writing, and for giving learners a real reason for writing (i.e. if they perceive their written work is being read by an audience beyond the teacher). If you're interested in encouraging process writing, then make sure your learners are engaged in this; that they use the blog for pre-writing, focusing ideas, and are involved in evaluating, structuring and editing. In this case, encouraging peer correction and editing may be the way forward. If you're main concern is to motivate learners to write with an audience, then make sure you can show them the blog is being read (see 4 below).

3. Think carefully about who has access. Blogs work best when they are public if your aim is increased motivation to write. Why publish something online unless people can read it? If your idea is to motivate learners to write by giving them an audience for their written work, then don't make the blogs private. You may, however, have other reasons for asking your learners to blog - it could be your circumstances mean that you want to encourage learners to write between classes and a blog will facilitate this and let you comment on what the learners have written before they come to class again. However, if the other learners don't read what their classmates have written, then this may be easier to accomplish using email. Of course, keeping a blog means the learners will have a record of all their written work in one place.

4. Find an audience. If your aim is to encourage writing through publication, then make sure you find an audience for your learners. This audience could be the learners themselves, another class or classes, parents, supportive colleagues, or a combination of these. If the learners feel that nobody is reading their writing, then blogging won't work - it'll be the same as them feeling the only audience they have for what they write is the teacher, and the only reason for the teacher reading this is for language correction. This is the surest way to ensure a public blogging project fails.

5. Show the audience. Finding an audience is one thing, but you need to show learners they are being read too. You can do this in different ways, but a counter on the blog is important - I have for years liked the ClustrMaps visitor counter because it displays numbers of visitors and shows you where in the world the visitors live. Commenting on blog posts is another way of showing learners they are being read by someone. Commenting is such an integral part of blogging, it should be encouraged right from the beginning of the blogging project. I always ask learners I start blogs with to write an introductory post and then comment on the posts of their classmates. Not only does it give fast finishers something else to do, but it encourages a practice that will help nurture the class blogging community.

6. Blog integration. If you're using blogs with classes, make sure you integrate them into whatever else you are doing in class. Make sure the subjects you ask learners to write about tie in with what you are doing in class and that they are relevant to the learners's lives and interests. Talking about what learners have written at the beginning of class, for instance, is a great way of rewarding learners who are putting a lot of effort into blogging, especially if the blogging is a voluntary part of the class.

7. Voluntary or compulsory? There are some teachers I know who are set against making blogging a compulsory part of the class. Then there are others who think their learners wouldn't blog unless it was compulsory. I have tried both methods and have succeeded and failed with both. If blogging is voluntary, then it needs to be encouraged and the learners who blog should be rewarded (see 6 above) in class. If compulsory, then make the tasks you set interesting for the learners so they aren't turned off writing, especially if one of your reasons for blogging in the first place is to encourage the learners to write, and to start to enjoy writing! So many learners I have taught have a negative attitude to writing caused (I think) by tasks previous teachers have set them, and yet I have found they can grow to enjoy writing if the kind of writing you do in class and the subjects you set (or, even better, the learners choose) is varied and interesting.

8. Speed is of essence. Make sure you respond quickly to learners when they write, especially when they start blogging. Write the same day if possible, or the day after if not. There's nothing worse than writing a blog post if you're starting out and then not getting any comments - it makes you feel there's nobody out there reading (see 5 above) and then learners will start asking themselves 'Why bother writing if nobody's reading?' To help you find out when a learner has written something, to enable you to respond, subscribe to all of your learners' blogs or use Google Reader or another similar tool. This will save you a lot of time, as it means you don't have to keep checking individual blogs to see if anyone has written anything.

9. Keeping going is harder. Keeping interest, in my experience, is the hardest thing to do with a blogging project. From the beginning, set a time limit and a goal for the learners. Tell them, for example, that you're going to be blogging for a term, and then at the end of the term, review this. did they enjoy it? Was it useful? do they want to continue? Make sure you have given them enough time to be able to reflect whether blogging is something they are interested in or not. Make sure too, that they have written frequently in their blogs. Once a week or more for learners is good practice. Make sure too, that you have responded as mentioned above. I have to say that the times I've undertaken blogging projects with classes and have followed the advice written above, the projects have been successful. I have done other blogging projects with classes that haven't been successful, and it's usually been because I haven't been able to show an audience, or haven't asked the learners to blog frequently, or didn't connect the blogging to what we were doing in class.

10. Be a blogger yourself. Don't ask learners to blog if you don't already blog. Keeping a blog and writing to it regularly before you ask learners to do the same will give you an idea of how it feels to do this, and you'll also have a better idea if it's something you're happy to ask learners to do too. If you can't keep it up, then how can you expect your learners to do so?

So that's it. I hope you find these suggestions useful, and please let me know if you agree/disagree with any of the points mentioned above, or indeed, if I've missed out anything important.

Is the ELT blogging honeymoon over?

Recently, Alex Case of TEFLTASTIC asked if the TEFL blogging boom was over. He was, of course, referring to the blogging explosion that happened over the last year or so in ELT, with lots of teachers who'd previously never done so starting blogs, and the fact that the hyper-activity of nine months or so has now died down. In particular, he cited the reduction in mutual linking and commenting.

I'm not sure if this lull has to do with the summer, and that once the new term begins (at least for many teachers in Europe), there'll be an increase in activity again. Time will tell. Alex wondered if the drop in activity was due to Twitter, but if anything, I think Twitter was probably behind the increase in blogging that ocurred in 2009. As this micro-blogging site took off and lots more teachers saw the value of it and got used to sharing their thoughts in 140 characters, I believe many of them then realised that sometimes, 140 characters wasn't enough, and the logical progression was for them to start a blog.

Taken together, Twitter and a blog are like Batman and Robin, a dynamic duo which has come to form the basis of a PLN (personal learning network) for many people. People pick up on trends using Twitter and expand upon them, writing posts on their blog, which they tell everyone about using Twitter, and so on.

There's also the Wow!factor of course. When someone first discovers blogging and gets a taste for it, then it's typical that they spend lots of time writing posts. It's new and it's fun and most people get a taste for it, especially when they have people visit and leave comments (the 'Hey! Someone is interested in what I have to say!' factor). As time goes by, however, and especially if the comments drop off, then it's not surprising if people start wondering if it's all worthwhile and post less frequently. Some will also stop blogging altogether.

As for me, I've gone through all of this, and have repeatedly told myself to be more of an active blogger, but, looking at my blogging statistics (below), in the eight years I have been blogging (2003-2010) seems to show that blogging is only something I do occasionally these days, and has been for a number of years. Making the chart below and tracking my blogging progress surprised me. Why? Because I still think of myself as a blogger, but I think I now read other people's blogs more and spend more time commenting upon them than I do on writing in my own blog. The exception, of course, is the Digital Play blog, which I share with my colleague Kyle Mawer – there we have been regularly blogging once a week and have every intention of carrying on doing so starting again this month.

So, what now for blog-efl? Well, I noticed that I've publicly stated on this blog that I was going to get back into blogging again and it never happened. Why was that? I think it was mainly because there were too many other things going on to occupy my attention, but I do keep coming back here, and I have every intention of becoming more of an active blogger. I think I've got my appetite back again. At least it now seems that my blogging activity is increasing (I've written one more post than I did last year) – I wonder if I'll ever return to the hyper-activity of 2003-4...

To Blog or not to Blog?

Why blog? Getting started - my experience

Recently, I've been thinking about blogging and why people do it. I've been encouraged by the nomination for an award I mentioned in my last post, and by Karenne Sylvester's call for entries to the blog carnival she has organised to help newbie EFL bloggers.

So, what makes someone sit down and write something and publish it on the Internet for all to see? In particular what makes an EFL teacher do this. The main reasons I suppose are self-expression, to communicate with other teachers, to share ideas, reflect on practice. Of course there's also the teacher who wants to try it out because you want your learners to blog and you don't think you should ask them to do something that you wouldn't do or haven't tried . That's why I started.

Let me start with some statistics - I've been blogging at http://blog-efl.blogspot.com for six years (since July 9th 2003), have written 553 posts so far and over 60,000 words.

My first post was directed at a group of teenage learners I was teaching in a summer school in Barcelona. I wanted to try out a new global community my school had set up for learners and had managed to get a daily computer room slot. Then, at the last minute, I was told that my students wouldn't be getting accounts in time, so I needed a backup plan. I remembered that a friend of mine had invited me to set up something called a blog six months previously - I'd joined and written one post and then not returned. But, I had seen that it was a quick and easy way of publishing on the Web and wondered if I could do this with my learners.

I jumped in and all of the learners in the two classes I was teaching se up blogs and started writing about themselves and reading what the learners in the other class had written - their curiosity was provoked, and although few of them wrote much, they were motivated enough to want to write and to read what the others had written, sharing their interests, and asking questions by leaving comments on the other learners' blogs.

I also started using the blog I'd set up to reflect upon the experience rather than write to the learners, as illustrated by the second post I wrote. By the end of the course, I was convinced that this was something that I should look into more, even though the learners had become a little bored with blogging during the course and I decided to do something else (you can read about this here if you like).

Getting Interested in blogging

I spent time after the course finding more out about blogging. At the time, there was little written about blogging and only a handful of EFL teachers were using blogs. One of them was Teresa Almeida D'Eca's Let's Blog. Teresa is a teacher based in Portugal - I'd been introduced to her through my colleague, Nik Peachey (who funnily enough has only recently started blogging himself) and was very impressed with her blog. So much so, I wrote a review of it on my blog.

I started learning a lot from the other educational bloggers out there about how best to use them. Aaron Campbell's article on Weblogging in ESL was very influential and there were tips from other bloggers about how best to encourage participation, and whether or not to correct.

You can tell from the amount I was writing to the blog (48 posts in August 2003!) just how enthusiastic I was getting. In fact this figure only shows a small part of it - I'd also been put in contact with a teacher in Brazil - Barbara Dieu (or Bee), who had been blogging with her students for some time. I wrote a review of her blog, Bee Online and also started responding to some of her ideas she had.

Sustaining Interest in Blogging

One of the many ideas that Bee had for promoting and sustaining learner interest in blogging was the idea of having a mystery guest on her blog. I was one of the two mystery guests in August 2003, and the results were convincing - the students responded well and wrote loads during this period. Bee said that they were all motivated and asking questions, trying to work out who the mystery guests were between classes, trying to get her to give them clues, etc. And afterwards, the conversations continued as we got to know each other. For me, this was the moment when I realised the power and potetnial of blogging with students. You can read the actual posts here - as a sidenote, I think it's wonderful that all of this still exists - it's been great to revisit this now, so many years afterwards.

I went on to run my own blogging experiments with classes that year and several years afterwards. Some of them were successful, others not so much. I kept in touch with both Teresa and Bee. They introduced me to the wonderful Community of Practice, the Webheads in Action, and to lots of other educators around the world. I co-moderated a series of online workshops about blogging with Bee and Aaron Campbell through the TESOL Electronic Village Online. Eventually, though, I found my interests turning more towards podcasting and then to social networking and games and virtual worlds. However, I still believe blogging is a great tool to use with students, and although my own blogging output has diminished recently, I can see how valuable it is for teachers' reflective practice and for sharing ideas and building community. Especially now, that it has started to be used by mainstream EFL teachers rather than just those who are interested in technology. This for me, is the key, and the main reason why I am interested in blogging regularly again.

Blogger's Block

So, what about the so-called blogger's block? Looking back at my blog entries, I can see that I have a lot of unpublished drafts. Posts that I started and didn't finish. And then I remember times when I wanted to write something and didn't. I think the most important thing is to be involved in the blogosphere. If you read other blogs (and nowadays take part in the conversations that are constantly happening in Twitter and Facebook, as well as on mailing lists, etc.), then you'll never be short of ideas for blog posts. Of course, the other thing to remember is that blogging is all about contributing - and no matter what you think, everyone has a unique voice and a relevant point-of-view - you can always add something interesting to the conversation. Just, as Karenne recently encouraged me to to on Facebook, jump in and do it - don't think too much about it.

I think it's also important not to feel overwhelmed - there is so much out there, you'll never be able to keep up with everything that's going on, vever be able to read all the blogs, etc, that you'd like to. Choose a few people to read regularly that you find interesting and then from time to time, let yourself be led by links from their blogs (or by serendipity) to other people. Be sure to contribute to other people's blogs by writing comments - it's very important for bloggers to feel that there's somebody out there reading what we are writing (otherwise, why write it, right?) - tools like clustrmaps are very important to a blogger to see that they have an audience (I prefer this visual demonstration of audience more than looking at a counter or at stats - I have also noticed that it impresses students more too)

Setting goals can be important to keep up interest too. apart from the goals you may set up with students (a good one is to always relate what you are doing in class to the blog and vice-versa), if you blog for other teachers or for yourself, then you might want to use the blog:-

• for reflective practice (write what you think about how a particular class went)
• as a repository for a future teaching e-portfolio
• to sound out ideas that you may want to follow up in an article or a conference presentation / INSETT session
• simply keep a record of your time as a teacher

Finally...

Most of all, treat blogging as something you do for fun that can also help your professional development and you should be able to continue, happy in the knowledge that what you are doing is of value.

BLOG-EFL nominated as one of the 100 Best Blogs (Language Technology)

Are awards important for bloggers? The reason I ask is because I recently found out I've been nominated for one (from Anna, whose excellent blog about her experiences in Second Life has also been nominated).

The Top 100 Language Blogs 2009 Awards have been organised by LexioPhiles and there are four categories: Language Learning, Language Teaching, Language Technology and Language Professionals.

I was surprised to hear that I'd been nominated, because I haven't been blogging here much recently (much of what I used to use my blog for has been taken over by Twitter or Facebook or Delicous).

Surprised and also chuffed. And then I wondered why. Thinking about it, I realised I'd been wanting to get back into blogging, but needed a good reason for doing so. Browsing the other nominated blogs (for me - this is the most important reason for such awards - you can find out about bloggers you weren't previously aware of, or people you haven't looked at in a while), I started to realise just how much wonderful stuff was being written by so many. I know now should start making blogging a priority again, and wonder why I'd stopped doing so for so long.

Hello again, Blogosphere! I'm back! And Thank you, Lexiophiles for giving me a reason to start blogging again.

TESOL Spain 2007 - Sant Sebastian

I am exhausted but happy after attending the 30th annual TESOL Spain Conference in Sant Sebastian (Donostia)last weekend, whose name 'Killing Two Birds with One Stone' refers to the very popular (at least in Spain) CLIL (Content Integrated Language Learning)movement.



I took the overnight train there on Thursday night, arriving at 7.00am on Friday morning. The conference wasn't due to start until 15.00, which in theory left me sufficient time for sightseeing, but, as I was due to present (on 'Online Student Publishing Projects') that evening, I spent much of the time beforehand, holed-up in my hotel room, making sure my presentation was up-to-scratch.



I arrived at 15.00 and found that I was one of the first people to arrive. Waiting around, I bumped into another early bird, who turned out to be the incoming President of TESOL (Sandra J Briggs). Quite by chance, we chatted about her taking over the presidency in Seattle later this month, and I was able to talk to her about the TESOL Electronic Village Online projects. She wrote down names, and promised to look up some of the people when she goes to the Convention. She also attended my presentation, which was very nice of her.



I was happy with how the presentation went, and surprised at how many people attended - over 50. I didn't have enough handouts for them, and so promised to post a copy of it on the TESOL Spain Website. Afterwards, quite a few people stayed to talk to me, and many said then, and later that weekend that they were going to start either blogging, podcasting, or using wikis with their students - Incidentally, if you are one of the people who attended, and who happens to be reading my blog afterwards, thankyou very much for the warm reception!



As for the rest of the weekend, I wish I had time to say just how much I enjoyed the other presentations I attended - it was fabulous to get so many ideas and hear so many competent speakers in such a short space of time. I think I have had my teaching batteries fully recharged, and have already been trying out some of the ideas (Thankyou Mario Rinvolucri and Paul Seligson)that I picked up while I was there.

The Electronic Village Online 2007

Today is the official start of TESOL's Electronic Village Online (EVO2007) , which is an annual event of free workshops run by volunteers and open to educators from all over the globe. This is my third time as a session moderator - I keep coming back for more!



Proceedings kicked off grandly with a World Bridges webcast, which can be heard at http://webheadsinaction.org/



There are a total of active 13 sessions this year, in what promises to be a fun and lively 6 weeks (The sessions run until February 25th).



Personally, I'm involved in three of the sessions. The Digital Gaming & Language Learning one will be looking at all aspects of gaming and language learning, and includes an optional module focusing on Second Life, which promises to be very active, and we have started a wiki, where most of our collaborative efforts will end up. I'll be moderating this with Nicholas Noakes, who is based in Hong Kong, and Rita Zeinstejer, in Argentina.



I'm also co-moderating the Open Webpublishing EVO session, but not until week 4. Before then, Bee (Barbara Dieu) and Patricia Glogowski will be leading the way, concentrating on blogs, wikis and other non-audio Web 2.0 tools for teachers. The last half of the session will concentrate on podcasting, and I'll be co-moderating that with Nicholas Noakes and Scott Lockman.



Finally, I'm also going to be helping out with the Webcast Academy EVO, which will look at live, interactive webcasting. this is something I'm involved with at EFL Bridges, one of the World Bridges community sites. Jeff Lebow is at the helm of this session, with Vance Stevens, Lee Baber, and other Webcast Academy graduates and internees helping out. The Webheads in Action site will be one of the homes of this EVO, and there is also a Webcast Academy Yahoo Group too.

These are just a few of the sessions that are going on - EVO is always a great meeting of minds and full of people who are very giving and willing to learn from each other - make the most of the opportunity if you think you have time. I'm sure you won't regret it.