Presenter: Samantha Instructor: Kate Student ID:

Weblogs By definition, a weblog is a website that is updated regularly and organized chronologically according to date, and in reverse order from most recent entry backwards. (Bull & Kajder, 2003; Mortensen, & Walker, 2002; Nardi, Schiano,Gumbrechtr& Swartz, Ward, 2004; Wijnia, 2004). 2

Weblogs With the ease of commenting immediately, weblogs are instrumental in enhancing interaction between the author and multiple audiences. They offer a communication medium that is more structured than an list and more focused than a discussion board. (Bull & Kajder, 2003) 3

Weblogs Weblog serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for only the author and possibly a few friends, in whom the bloggers are often communicate something about their personality through the style of writing and the choice of topics. (Bottger & Roll, 2004; Nardi, Schiano, umbrechtr & Swartz; Efimova & Fiedler, 2004). 4

Weblogs Moreover, a weblog contains much information about someone’s personality, such as the use of colors, lay-out of the template, photograph, are signals of somebody’s personality. (Wijnia, 2004) 5

Weblogs Weblogs can be either private spaces that allow the writers to record personal experiences or be open spaces that welcome conversations and linking. 6

Technical Infrastructure of Weblogs The technical infrastructure that enables weblogs, it can be summarized into three categories: tools to write and publish weblogs (weblog tools), tools to read weblogs (news aggregators), tools to find weblog posts or connections between them (searching and tracking tools) (Efimova & Fiedler, 2004) 7

Technical Infrastructure of Weblogs That is to say, weblog writers and their readers now can find flexible and easy-to- use tools for writing and publishing their own content, for monitoring the publications of others, and for searching and identify connections between people and topics. (Efimova & Fiedler, 2004) 8

For second language teachers, it is believed that the potential of the weblog can fulfill many of the needs identified for the effective teaching of writing. Weblogs can provide teachers and student writers with an engaging, rich writing space while offering access to an instant publishing press. (Bull & Kajder, 2003) 9

A Class Weblog As for the practical application of teaching, language instructors may use class weblogs for writing practice in the target language. When some mistakes recur frequently, teachers can inform students of the correct usage by giving feedback on it, so that the members of this class would equally have access to the collective comments. 10

A Class Weblog More specifically, a class weblog can be applied as a site for class interaction where learning assignment and instructional prompts are posted. It could be used as a free online bulletin board for learners to give message, upload multimedia files, and post links related to classroom discussion topics. (Campbell, 2003) 11

A Class Weblog And for writing classroom, a class weblog is much like a publishing group, and individual learners can be given varying amounts of responsibility to publish material. Weblogs provide great opportunities for collaborative project, debates, and information exchange. 12

A Student Weblog It is possible to use weblogs for creating a more student-centered learning environment, because students could empower their authorship by controlling the content on their own. The belief is that, by blogging, students can get writing practice, develop a sense of ownership, and get experience with the practical, legal, and ethical issues of creating a hypertext document. (Johnson, 2004) 13

A Student Weblog Weblogs allow writers to insert images, video, audio, written text and so on to illustrate their meaning. Therefore, it can be said that weblogs open students to multiple means of communication. Particularly, weblogs provide such a multi- genre, multimedia writing space that can engage visually minded students and draw them into a different interaction with print text. (Sara & Bull; 2003) 14

A Student Weblog The traditional writing classrooms are filled with students who struggle with reading and writing. They seldom read for pleasure and only write required assignments. These students are not engaged by the writing prompt offered in classes and rarely have an authentic writing experience. However, the myriad weblogs on today’s Internet offer models of writing for authentic self-writing. (Bull & Kajder, 2003 ) 15

A Student Weblog Self-publishing encourages ownership and responsibility of the part of students, who may be more thoughtful if they keep the real audience in mind. That is to say, they can attract a large audience and generate feedback. The audience brings its opinions, advice and criticism which may enhance the development of student reflectivity. The feedback from the real audience may intensify learning process and lead to special forms of reflection, which can be described as “intrapersonal conversations” (Stiler, 2003, p.2 & Wrede, 2003) 16

Thank you for your listening! 17