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Blogs: a complementary activity for english teaching

A practical example: the Blog contest of the “Francophonie”, 2009 edition.

In April 2009, the network of the French Alliance of Spain, in partnership with Educafrances and the educational cooperation department of the French Embassy in Spain, launched a blog contest. The contest was addressed to bilingual classes, to French foreign language classes and to individuals who are learning French.

Conclusions of the Blog contest

The blogs created within the framework of the contest had high quality presentations as well as contents. The students and professors’ motivation was reflected through the excellence of their completed work.

What is important to understand about the blogs?

The blog allows people who are not specialists in data processing to publish their work on the Internet. A blog is a web site in which one can add text, images, sound, videos, presentations and many other things. Comments on the articles published can be sent by netsurfers (comments are moderated by an administrator who decides whether or not to publish them).

Several free software downloads are available for creating a blog, such as WordPress.com or Blogger.com. Online help guides explain how to create a blog. Be careful though as some are used for publishing advertisements in blogs. Check if your supplier provides the option of a free blog without any kind of advertisement!

You will be able to easily personalize your blog with existing “topics” i.e. you can choose to a certain extent the appearance that you wish to give your blog. In the same way, you can also create ways of access for other people - in addition to your access administrator keys - who would like to add their own contributions. This will help you to have a living blog.

Lastly, one can create several kinds of blogs:

The teacher’s blog. The teacher indicates on the blog the course syllabus, lesson texts/resources and academic year objectives and shows students the activities he/she wants to launch:

• blog
• treasure hunt (webquest)
• role-playing game
• routes of discovery
• workshops
• exercises…

In this case, the teacher is the only one contributing to his/her blog.

The class blog. The teacher creates a blog and gives his/her students the possibility of getting a password to it for them to be able to add articles in the blog. In this way, the class blog will represent a “showcase” of what is made in class and gives credit to its authors.

Be careful! If you want to publish photos of the students on the blog, the teacher must ask the parents of minors for a “parental authorization for publication” in order to respect image copyright law.

The blog might have a teaching interest. For that, it is clearly necessary to have defined what one wants to do: a living blog is a frequently fed blog. Without a concerted project, the blog will not be used.

The blog can belong to the academic program of the year. Then, all of the finished works posted on the blog may be counted towards the final mark.

It encourages:

• written expression in English
• oral expression (through videos)
• use of new technologies in English teaching
• communication between authors: sharing information, developing a critical eye, commenting on inserted documents, proofreading drafts before publication, constant feedback between students and teacher
• continuing or completing work done in class thanks to availability of blogs outside of class time.
• students to develop their imagination and creativity (for example, the creation of « voki » personalized by the students for introducing themselves (www.voki.com)).
• students of one class or several classes to work individually or in groups. The instructions as well as the work obtained are published in the blog.
• following ongoing blog activities if the blog falls under the objectives of the academic year.

The English teacher may ask for assistance from the data-processing/technology teacher while preparing his/her students for the varied tasks they will have to carry out.

For example:

• how to do word and image processing
• how to design and carry out a presentation using Power Point
• making a video
• voice recording
• the drafting of descriptive texts (a biography, etc.)

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