2008. Not long ago I started blogging. It was 2005 just as I was taking my
TESOL Principles and Practices of Online Teaching Certificate Program. That’s when I decide it was high time I started giving it a try. I first heard of blogging in 1999 in a workshop at my workplace. I was fascinated by the possibilities, but, at that time, blogging was still just a distant concept to grasp with a need for a bit of HTML knowledge that I had no idea where to start learning…Well, I did! I knew I could learn a bit online, but was it fear, time excuse, or just keeping myself in the comfort zone of known things? Why would I need to go even further? I was already doing too much in terms of technology compared to my colleagues.
No need for comparisons. Otherwise, I’d still be sticking tons of flashcards on the blackboard and cutting hundreds of magazine photos as class realia. Comparing myself to the others was not what kept me going. So, in 2005 I was ready to give blogging a try, but I wanted to do something special. I started big. If I really had given it some thought, I think I wouldn’t have taken that huge step, but I decided to invite an online friend, Dennis Oliver, for an international exchange. If it were now, I’d start the other way around, from blogging for professional development, connecting to others, listening to other bloggers, to stepping into the classroom sphere. I guess I was just too anxious of a learner and felt blogging was an interesting addition to what I was already doing in the classroom (connecting with students through yahoogroups, for example). When we headed for our international interaction, I had been already blogging not with my students, but for my students. It was still a unidirectional informational space. I was replicating what I did in the classroom, except that I was using another medium. My intention was certainly good, as I knew my students were all into techie things and social network spaces. I realized there were just sporadic comments and I had so much work preparing posts for our
class blog (in fact, my blog!). After giving it some thought, and by listening to other online edubloggers’ voices, it dawned on me that I was missing the great chance of having the blog as conversational, reflective, engaging spaces for my students. Why would they reply or say something if I was just posting homework and class grammar content?!
That’s when my
International Exchange blog with Dennis was conceived. Dennis and I were just starting, testing, sharing, learning. I didn’t have easy access to computers in the classroom. Many times I had to print Dennis’ students messages and take them to the classroom to work there. At that time, my best option was to have teams of students working together. We had to manage classroom schedules with the great addition of the blogging conversations. We juggled, came up with different solutions to keep the conversation among our students flowing. Some of my students would even “risk” replying from home. They loved the experienced, we exchanged postcards and mementos from our countries. Yes, I started to understand what blogging was about, taking language learning, communication, and connections to another dimension. We kept experimenting with our new classes, Dennis’ colleagues joined us, we moved forward, innovated in tasks, looked for creative ways to engage our students.
http://internationalexchange.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html
At that time, I didn’t know much about syndication, nor did I pay attention to the power of tagging. Still, nothing hindered us from developing communication channels within our classes.
We started to fearlessly explore the possibilities. I remember when I first tested with my students recording audio. After some class discussion, my adult students recorded and asked questions to Dennis. They were thrilled, I was exhilirating! Podcasts also became part of our blogging world. My shy, quiet students blossomed in the blogging classroom. I’ll never forget the kinds of conversations Emerson, a quiet student in class, engaged in our class blog:
Emerson’s interactions with Dennis, and long after Emerson still participated in
international conversations.
From the international exchanged, I expanded my blogging horizons indefatigably looking for options and possibilities that would fit my teaching principles and beliefs, my learner’s goals and needs, as well as balance with institutional curricular requirements. I went from
Brazil and Brazilians connected,
CTJ Online,
Top 21,
SambaEFL, to
elearningCTJ. Even with some blogging road, there’s still a long way to go.
Now, I also keep this blog for personal reflections on teaching and learning, and my personal blog to write about
my experience in Key West.
My 2.0 blogging concept is maturing. The conversations we’ve been keeping in the
blogging4educators session, how we’re connecting, using syndication, exploring the power of tagging to aggregate online artifact as proposed by
Vance Stevens and team, the chat with special guests like the
Women of the Web2.0,
Konrad Glogoswksy and
Paul Allison, the open ears to online voices in the blogosphere are really shaping up my new perceptions of blogging as a dialogic tool.
Carla Raguseo’s post on our distributed conversations summarizes the essence of our enriching blogging experience for the past weeks.
The possibilities are limitless. I simply need to keep exploring how to balance them in a way that I focus on my learners’ drives, my main teaching and learning goals and my institutional settings.
The big question: Which blogging practice would be a good balance for the different forces involved in the blogging classroom? I’m on the road to find the answers, but certainly agree with Konrad that
“…good teaching is a subversive activity. We’ve been using external pressures as an excuse to do nothing for too long.” (
Towards Reflective Blog Talk 02-04-2008). I’m exploring and sharing. No excuses for not moving towards some paradigm shifts that are essential for educators tuned in to a multiliterate flat world.
Kids need guidance. At home, they generally don’t get it from parents who sometimes are clueless about the richness of the Web, as well as of its true dangers. So, who better than an educator who’s passionate, engaged in the online community of educators, concerned about developing his kids’ skills for the present “real world” to help the little ones understand the subtleties of the Web? Blogging, voicethreading, this is all part of a reality that cannot be ignored. So, Al was there exploring his students’ voices, passions, drives in the teaching/learning process in a way that was meaningful to them. They were learning from each other and from international partners, blogging coaches. Probably these students would never have had the chance to learn so much about cultural issues, other peoples, and even develop their media literacy skills, ICT and information skills if they hadn’t been exploring together, in class, the wonders of Web 2.0 tools that might impact their lives in terms of advancement of their critical thinking skills, creativity, self-expression.