Bibliography 7
Arena, C. (2008) Blogging in the Language Classroom: It Doesn’t “Simply Happen” [Electronic Version]. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, 11, 4, 1-7. Retrieved on November 27, 2010 from
This is a peer-reviewed article. The author of this article is Carla Arena a Brazilian EFL teacher, explorer of the potential of technology integration into language learning.
The article’s focus is on how important it is to teach students the importance of the use of blogs and how effective they can be in education. The article focus is on how teachers need to address the best practices’ for the use of blogs. According to the article, many understand that blogs can be used to construct knowledge and are used to post material online, however there is much more to blogging. The article states that blogging can be used for professional development, class blogs, and students' individual blogs, (Arena, 2008, p1). The article states that blogs can be used as conversations. When blogs are used for conversations, the teacher has to define his or her role as the communicator and their particular position they play in blogging. The educator should be monitoring the conversations amongst the students. Students can use blogging to answer posts and learn how to properly cite sources.
The article suggests that students can use blogs as a way to establish their own blogging voice. Blogging can be used to develop thinking skills. Students should be writing about a topic that is sincere to them, which allows them to stay engaged in the writing. The teacher has to support the students in this process of finding their tone by commenting on the dialogue. Additionally, the article states that blogging can be used for Authentic Audience. Blogs allow for relationships to build beyond the instructor (Arena, 2008, p4). Blogs allow for students to open up and establish relationships with other students in the class.
The article suggests that blogging can be used as a tool for tagging. In the article Arena carried out a study on a group of teachers. The study's focus was on the use of tagged blogs. The study was called Blogging for Educators. Many teachers participated in a blog discussion. The study had all teachers tag there content with the tag Blogging for Educators. The educators then did a search and found that their searches were already tagged with Blogging for Educators. Arena created a new tag each week. Although the participants were falling behind, they still were able to communicate by following their tagged colleges.
The article covered the various use of blogging. The author points out that learning via blogs does not just happen over night. Blogging doesn't "simply happen" (Arena, 2010, p6). It happens when the educators and learners completely put forth the effort to establish and participate in meaningful conversations.
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