Around 1977 the weblog chronicled itself and only few websites were established back then. Then some time in 1999 there was a rapid call of a community of bloggers and finally the name weblog or blog was termed. As a result, internet citizens or netizens are starting to blog now as there are many free do-it-yourself weblog tools available on the Internet (Blood, 2000). Bartlett-Bragg (2003) projected that in the year 2003, there have been a number of 500 000 blogs on the Internet. These statistics is expected to multiply almost throughout the next five to ten years and their usage cover the following segments; English language learning, journalism and business.
Without doubt, language academicians have begun integrating weblogs into their classroom because, parallel to a webpage; a weblog allows a pool of links for students to various autonomous resources including online exercises, documents, and course information. Put it simply, it can function as a class website. Furthermore, weblog has the possibility of becoming a full out distance learning instrument which is made feasible by the asynchronous and synchronous communication features it can accommodate. In addition, creating weblogs is much easier than constructing a web page or web publishing as it does not need much technical knowledge (Wilkins, 2001). What as well makes weblog an attractive modus operandi in education is that it provides knowledge sharing and learning collaboration among a number of students where educators can now form a community of learners, which is a vital learning ‘ingredient’. Weblogs can prolong in-class activities where discussions and collaborations resume long after schools are over and when students have left for home. Thereby, the weblog is a brilliant vehicle for student-centered learning (Weiler, 2003).
In the arena of English as a second or foreign language teaching and learning weblogs can be used in several ways. Here, Campbell (2003) grouped three weblog types for ESL classroom use. These are the tutor, the learner and the class blog. As a tutor the weblog installs daily reading practices, supports the exploration of English websites, promotes online verbal dialogues by the use of the comment function or tag boards, supplements with it class or syllabus information and serves as a resource of links for self-learning. Learner blogs are created by the learners themselves either individually or as a group. They provide spaces for reading, writing practices and learning by self discoveries through creating links. A class blog permits it to be utilized as a bulletin board to post messages, images and links, to facilitate project-based language learning activities and to a certain degree, facilitate global cultural exchanges of ideas.
These ideas-exchanging could refer to the field of journalism where blogs are seen central to written publication. As a student, the establishment of weblog enables one to put up writings, especially to observe grammatically correct, cohered and comprehensible sentences. Consolidation of subtopics in Structures in Context (SKBE 1023) with the course itself is therefore reflected and well thought with regard to future job prospects. As written publication is closely associated with journalism, the implementation of using weblog with journalism globally has widely been upheld. The University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication which actively allows the involvement of students in the School’s news broadcasting, exposes the students to a typical yet wide-ranging working-oriented environment and rules; for example meeting with deadlines, working in teams, taking responsibility and volunteering; apart from having their publications publicly viewed through the net via weblog. This execution of tasks is indirectly giving the students essential skills of writing experience (Pryor 2003). They commented that the weblog has made news as attention worthwhile as it provides diverse perspectives and new horizons through the weblog-participation. Hence, the weblog increases the language awareness and one’s experience in the line of journalism.
In order to keep one’s information abreast with the business worlds, a weblog performs the following functions; ‘for communication and collaboration for a distributed team’ (Herman 2003), an excellent tool to make contact with customers (Herman 2003), ‘as a way of managing project’ (White 2003), impart information with regards to project updates, research, product and industry business and non-business news (Rosencrance 2004) and ‘to manage and improve the flow of information among employees’ (O’Shea 2003). In short, the weblog can be considered as a medium through which businesses operate and assist information conveyance.
Weblog and its Barriers
Accessibility- one of the potential problems of using weblog still entails. We as students who do not have our own Internet connection may encounter disappointment in reading the teacher’s and our peers’ blogs. Among all, financial problem could add to this hindrance, as limited budget sometimes disallow us to have blogs posted in the cyber cafes. In this case, a slot of computer lab work has perhaps fixed this problem.
Another potential barrier is thereby in convincing us to use weblogs. Because it is considered a new and exciting technology, it does not mean that we will be motivated or want to use especially for academic purposes. Also the excitement of writing entries into the weblog may eventually disappear as in a lot of the blogs the researcher have come across on the Internet. Hence, our interests to blog would not only be dependent upon or confined to academic subjects, but also non-academic ones. In addition, in the midst of juggling time between curricular and non-curricular activities some of the students feel that the lack of time can affect blogging interests.
In Blogs as Tool for Teaching (2005) by Steven D. Krause, he discovered that discussion using weblog lacks the dynamic interactions that take place in emails and or bulletin boards. There seems no literal interaction contained; possibly due to limited text space and that the discussions are not threaded. Thus, it is predicted that comments and tag board discussion will only involve information seeking. The use of e-mail and the instant-messaging may be used to have this problem settled.
Personal View on Blogging
Perhaps the most noteworthy findings associated with the use of weblog is when it suppresses the freedom of expression. I believe that using the weblog as a means to alleviate the feelings of isolation and alienation. Expressing one’s view in weblogs reflects that the individual is ready to enter a virtual community; the community only he or she knows about and that the person is aware of that there is a presence of connectivity among one another.
An additional point worth mentioning here is with regard to the quality of of written work; be it for assignment or non-assignment ones. Writing as part of the English Language Studies programme itself is consistent with critical thinking which is more broader than the contextual needs of the programme itself. The writing processes involved, which is planning, drafting, re-drafting, and editing before the final work is produced, demand the author to be in a much broader social context , that is to apply more than what the lectures have dictated. Not only does critical thinking of the written work improves, but having the written work published in the weblog develops the proceeding motivation to issue them extensively, thus making the motivation intrinsic by itself.
References
Bartlett-Bragg, A. 2003. Blogging to learn. Knowledge Tree e-Journal.
Blood, R. 2000.Weblogs: A history and perspective. http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog [16 March 2007]
Campbell, A.P. 2003. Weblogs for use in ESL classes. The Internet TESL Journal, (IX):2 [16 March 2007]
Gall, M.D., Borg W.R., and Gall J.P. 1996. Educational research: An introduction (6th ed).
New York: Longman
Herman, J. 2003. Blogs for business. Business Communications Review. 33(4): 20-21. [16 March 2007]
Krause, S. D. 2005. Blogs as a tool for teaching. The Chronicle of Higher Education. June (51:42) [16 March 2007]
O’Shea, W. 2003. The online journals known as Web logs are finding favor as an efficient way to communicate in the workplace. The New York Times. C3.
Pryor, L. 2003. A Weblog Sharpens Sharpens Journalism Student’s Skills. Nieman Reports
Cambridge. 57(3): 97. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=439800991&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=28403&RQT=309&VName=PQD [16 March 2007]
Rosencrance, L. 2004. Blogs bubble into business. Computerworld 38, 23. Weiler, G. 2003. Using weblogs in the classroom. English Journal May 92(5):73. [16 March 2007] White, M. 2003. Web logs: Moving beyond cool. EContent 26(12):10.
Wilkins, P.E. 2001. Weblogs potential in education. http://dept.sccd.ctc.edu/tlc/resources/weblogs.html. [16 March 2007]
April 3, 2007 at 3:00 am
Good write up about blogging and I like your tshirt! Yours or your younger brother’s!!. Where is your picture? you have changed your blog template and banner. I like how you write your stuff as you add in references and try to make it understandable by others. The video collection and also search facilities!. Good job
April 3, 2007 at 11:20 am
Thanks Datin. The shirt is taken from a Google image, because I do find the image appealing, though. The cropped picture of my eyes? Oh, that one is removed to suit the blog with the course itself, I thought if the picture was there, it doesnt reflect that seriousness at all. Mucho gracias!
March 21, 2008 at 11:16 pm
thanks much, brother