Chapter 7

Blogs, wikis and podcasts

Social software

Blogs, wikis, and podcasts are all examples of social software, computer tools which allow people to connect, to communicate and to collaborate online.

o Blog is essentially a web page with regular diary or journal entries.

o Wiki is a collaborative web space, consisting of a number of pages that can be edited by any user.

o Podcast is an audio and /or video file that that is broadcast via the Internet and can be downloaded to a computer or mobile device such as an MP3 player for listening/viewing.

Blogs in language teaching

Blogs used in education is known as edublogs. Edublogs cover a wide range of topics related to education, from musings on educational policy and developments to learner composition.

An edublog can be set up by a teacher, by individual learners or by a class. A teacher may decide to use a blog to provide their learners with news and comments on issues, extra reading practice or homework, online links, a summary of a class for learners who were unable to attend, study tips and so on.

A blog set up and maintained by a teacher is known as a tutor blog. The teacher may decide to allow their learners to write comments in the blog.

A teacher may encourage their learners to each set up and maintain their own individual blog. These are known as student blogs. Learners can be ask to to post to their blogs, once or twice a week, or however the teacher judges convenient, and content can range from comment on current affair to description of daily activities.

How to start using blogs with learners

Step 1. Setting up a sample blog

Step 2. Setting up a student blogs

Step 3. Posting to and visiting blogs

Step 4. Follow up

Wikis in language teaching

A wiki is like a public website, or public web page, started by one person, but which subsequent visitor can add to, delete or change as they wish. A wiki lends itself especially well to collaborative writing. The mechanic of using a wiki are relatively simple: learners can add new pages to a wiki, as well as edit to a previous pages.

How to start using a wiki with learners

Step 1. Preparation before lesson

Step 2. In famous people: description

Step 3. In famous people: corrections

Podcasts in language teaching

There are two main uses of podcasts in teaching. Firstly learner can listen to podcasts made by other hand, secondly, they can produce their own podcasts.

How to create learner podcasts

Step 1. Setting up a podcast page

Step 2. Creating learner podcasts

Step 3. Listening to learner podcasts

Step 4. Follow up