Embracing the blogosphere

For me, writing is exploration; and most of the time,

I'm surprised where the journey takes me. ~ Jack Dunn ~

As I was contemplating the role of blogging in the language classroom, my mind started off on a mission of its own (a frequent event... nothing to be surprised or alarmed about), and I wondered why the US flag has seven red and six white stripes and why not the other way around? Without wasting too much time, trying to come up with clever explanations, I just grabbed my computer, opened Google and voila... 'a world of information at my fingertips'. This in return, well not the stripes, but the ease of access, made me think back to my own school days. I remember a life that to a large extent was untouched by technology. And to imagine the integration of what we take for granted today (computers, the internet, iPods, etc.) into a classroom was unheard of. Just for the record...I am not that old...twenty-something...which just proves my point... how fast the world changed and continues to change with the arrival of new technologies. I found a few statistics on the good old web and although I cannot promise their accuracy, a few other sites did make mention of the same figures.

According to the website, Pingdom, there were 90 trillion emails sent in 2009, averaging 247 billion emails sent per day. In December 2009, 234 million websites existed with 47 million of those being added during the year of 2009. And if this still does not put the role of technology in our daily lives into perspective, then perhaps the following quote from http://econsultancy.com might:

"It took [the] radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The internet took four years to reach 50 million people... [And] in less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users".

It becomes thus very apparent that the language classroom needs to incorporate technology to capture the attention and the passion of a generation of world citizens. This blog, as mentioned before, will aim to highlight the role of some of the available technologies in the reading and writing classroom. Blogging is one such a technological tool. Several websites mention that the current number of active blogs is at 133 million blogs (http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/12/10/blogging_stats_facts_data). The authors do not state whether they count Facebook and Twitter accounts as part of the blogosphere, but according to Facebook statistics, they have more than 500 million users, which far exceeds the 133 million blogs, thus allowing us to assume that those 133 million blogs are online journal type blogs.

Ferdig and Trammell (2004), argue that this "intellectual cyberspace that bloggers occupy" provide what Winer (2003) notes, a space for the "unedited, published voice of the people". When blogging is introduced in the language classroom, students are provided with a space to "reflect and publish their thoughts and understandings" (Ferdig and Trammell, 2004).

Ferdig and Trammell (2004) make mention of some other benefits of blogging in the classroom, which include the potential to promote interactivity, an increase in higher-order skills and an opportunity for active learning. Having students blog in a reading and writing classroom provides them with a chance to become experts in a given subject matter and as Ferdig and Trammell (2004) further state, "increase their interests and ownership in the learning process".

Enabling our students to develop their voice, is such a powerful and important task and blogging surely provides one such a platform to do so.

Reference:

Ferdig, R.E., Trammell, K.D. (2004). Content Delivery in the 'Blogosphere'. The Journal Online: Technological Horizons in Education.