Blogs and Blogging

Blogs or ‘weblogs’ are webpages which are frequently updated and show content posted in chronological order by date. Unlike traditional webpages which deal in one-way communication, blogs allow readers to leave comments and thus enable new and exciting ways of communication to take place. Educational blogs are springing up all over the net, including those related to languages.

As a starting point, there are good examples from Scotland via the Modern Foreign Languages Environment’s MFLE Weblog and the Partners in Excellence project’s PiE blog.

For the new blogger, Blogosphere is a programme from the Inspirations series on Teachers TV which explains what blogs are and how they can be used to help learning. The MFLE site also offers an explanation of what blogging is and how to create one, under Creative teaching.

The Times Educational Supplement has started its own ICT blog Talking Sense about Technology, which already contains contributions specific to modern languages from Joe Dale, a French teacher from Nodehill Middle School on the Isle of Wight. Check out the archives.

Individual UK language teachers are beginning to join the blogosphere too, by setting up their own blogs. One of the most active is that recently launched by Ruth Parker, the French co-coordinator at Cranborne Middle School in Dorset. It includes a range of useful links and helpful ideas for KS2/3 MFL teachers.

St Julie's Primary MFL weblog is a weblog set up by John Hopwood at a Liverpool specialist language college, St Julie’s Catholic High School. It is designed as an information portal for primary colleagues, to support their language teaching, and contains many useful links and relevant resources. In the future, John plans to use the blog to facilitate twinning links between primary schools in Liverpool and France. In a recent email exchange, John said:
“I really think blogs are a great way to encourage interactive activities between classes and our problem has been finding other schools abroad so that we have someone to play with.”

Here are some more languages bloggers:

Teaching KS2 Modern Languages is a blog written by a primary school teacher from Bolton, Mike Gadd, who has a particular interest in using ICT in his teaching. He has only recently set up the blog, but promises he will be adding to it soon.
MFL@SJA is a blog which showcases pupils' work, set up by Sebastien Gilhodes, a teacher in the MFL department at St Joseph's Academy, a secondary boys' school in Blackheath, London.
For secondary colleagues AshcombeWeb is a blog created to provide information about the resources available on The Ashcombe School website.
Ewan McIntosh, Development Officer for the Modern Foreign Languages Environment and one of the leading speakers on blogs, runs his own educational blog. Why not download one of the podcast presentations from his site and learn more about blogging and podcasting on your computer or mp3 player? Check out the website of Musselburgh Grammar School, Ewan’s former school in the East of Scotland. It created the first ‘open comment’ blog where readers could leave unedited comments on what appeared in the blog.
Foreign language blogs can provide excellent authentic reading material. Have a look at the European Centre for Modern Languages Blogs project
and consider encouraging your students to leave their own target language comments.

Educational blogs are now a reality. Who knows how they will be used in the future? Keep reading and contributing!

Languages ICT

Blogs and Blogging