Readings for my literature

Yey...I have officially started my readings for my literature.

I have finally started to write my first literature draft which comprises many articles on blogs in edcuation and very few on blogs in EFL. Unfortunately, there hasn't been much research on blogs in EFL and the little that has taken place is mainly in Japan or America. These small scale studies have found that blogging is beneficial in many ways in an English language classroom. Findings include: blogs increase learner autonomy, provide authentic writing and reading practice, improve lexical usage and revison of language learnt. Although thses benfeits are sound, they can still be achieved with other online prgrammes and non-online classroom material. for me, as I have been reading, io have been desperately looking for a breakthrough- an idea, a quality or a feature of blogging that will make me go "AHA that's what blogging is about." What I have realised instead is that what is really unique to blogging is the possibility of self-expression and formation or recognition or confirmation of self-identity.

In addition, the more i read about blogging in the classroom, the more i realise that there is very little teacher guidance except for instruction manual like texts on how to use blogs or ideas on how to integrate them in class. However, what abot the pedagogy? In the teaching of CMC, we have realised that something needs to be changed in the pedagogy and the role of the teacher is thus affected. Surely, this is the same for the use of social software in education. This is where Anne Bartlett-Bragg's framework comes in and inspries me to have a go. I as a teacher working in a small private language school am very behind in terms of technology use in the classroom; so behind that we have only just had 3 interactive whiteboards installed. I, although a little more confident than other teachers at my place, have found it very difficult to integrate technology as much as I would have like to. I ask myself-should we be focussing on the pedagogy and the evolvement in teaching that needs to take place with the developoment of technology? If we are going to successfully integrate these technologies such as blogs, we are going to have to rethink our teaching strategies, methods and approaches.

Have to go now.. boyfriend waiting to go out for food...:)