This document discusses using blogs in English language teacher education programs. It defines blogs as collections of brief posts arranged in reverse chronological order. Blogs are a new multimodal writing genre that can improve critical thinking, writing fluency, and social skills. In teacher education programs, blogs can enhance pre-service teachers' reflective practices and help them connect theory to practice. When implemented properly with guidelines around safety, privacy, and ethics, blogs can be a motivating tool for future teachers to express themselves and develop their teaching skills.

1. BLOGS IN ENGLISH
LANGUAGE TEACHER
EDUCATION PROGRAMS
Entisar Elsherif
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
2013 Three Rivers TESOL Conference

2. OUTLINE
• What’s a blog?
• Blogging as a new writing
• genre
• Blogs in the classroom
• Blogs in Teacher Education
Programs

3. A “brief, discrete hunks of information called posts.
These posts are arranged in reverse-chronological
order (the most recent posts come first).”
(Doctorow et al, 2002, p.1)
What’s a blog?

6. Blogging as a new writing genre
Blog are new captivating writing genres:
• They are “a composite of several genres, a
blend of forms familiar to most of us” The
text involves many parts that might
constitute parts that could be a
conversation, a narrative, a letter, or a
newspaper article. Blogs perform
“diligently and reliably in whatever type of
writing the blogger undertakes”
(Penrod, 2007, p.44)

7. Blogging as a new writing genre
• Blogs are changing literacy to become multimodal. They not only
contain the written text, but also include images, sounds, graphics,
videos, podcasts, and links to other websites.
• Blogging also provides marginalized learners a platform to come out
of their isolation and express themselves.

8. Advantages of using blogs
 Blogging as a new writing genre changes literacy to become multimodal.
 Blogs improve critical thinking ,writing fluency and social skills .
 Blogging helps marginalized learners to become part of learners community .
 It creates motivating environment.
 Blogging develops the ethics and process of responding to and interacting with others .
 It helps in growing the habit of searching the internet for information that related to their topics .

9. Blogs in the classroom
Safety
Raising learners’ awareness towards issues
of internet safety, such as educating learners
and showing them the consequences of cyber-bullying.
Privacy
Teachers might set up private blogs, divide the
assignments into two types: in-class
assignments and blogs assignments, ask
students to use pseudonyms, provide
instruction on how to give suitable constructive
feedback, divide students into peers that read
each other’s blog entries before posting and
set up the blog entries to not to be published
until they are approved by the teacher.
Integrity & Ethical Conduct
Create classroom ethics by writing a code of
ethics that “can provide a system for handling
concerns as they arise”
The availability of sources itself helps learners
to learn that by linking these sources directly
to their blogs they “cut down on plagiarism,
since the original source can be easily
reached”

10. Blogs in Teacher Education Programs
• Blogs can potentially enhance pre-service teachers’ reflective
practices and help them make a better connection between theory and
practice.”
• Taking into consideration “both instructor’s and pre-service teachers’
prior experiences with blogs, their practices, and their representations
and convictions.”
(Bangou, 2011)

11. Tutor Blog
Teacher educators post short blog entries and links that might help student
teachers
Learner Blog
Teacher Educators either divide the class into small groups where each
group runs a blog or ask each student teacher to run a blog individually. It is
suitable for reading and writing.
Class Blog
Class blogs involve student teachers in collaborative work because they
are run by the whole class. This type of blogs can be used in conversation-based
classes, project-based language learning, international classroom
language exchange, and as knowledge management software.

12. The types of blog assignments range from:
• just a blog that compiles students written reflections
• to other varied types of blogs such as
research blog,
technology autobiography blog,
word-of- the- day blog,
reading journal blog,
grammar blog,
and literature reflections blog.

13. • choice and range of blogs depend on the students’ level and the objectives of
integrating blogs into the classroom.
• For a writing teacher, blogs can be used as prewriting tools. This prewriting
blog provides the learners to learn the process of writing by practicing and in
the same time learners compile this process in their blog where they can visit
whenever they needed.

14. • Use of blogs as a reflective platform: use of blogs as a platform to critically
reflect on their learning processes as well as to gauge the impact of blogs on
their own.
• professional growth.
• use as a discussion forum so that the student teachers could engage in and
examine their own reflection process: student teachers will actively discuss
teaching theories and their implications through blogs.
• A useful platform for communicating with each other .
• Blogs can stimulate reading and motivate learning.

15. Conclusion
• blogs can be motivating for
future teachers and enable
them to have the ability to
express themselves and
become willing to present their
thoughts and have their own
voice.
• Blogs give them the chance to
reflect on their teaching and
follow their professional
progress.
• The pitfalls of using blogs should
not discourage teacher educators
from integrating them into the
English classroom and Teacher
Education programs. With some
focused instruction, student
teachers will be motivated to
blogging and this will enhance their
language proficiency, especially
reading and writing, as well as their
teaching practice.