A few months ago, I wrote my views on the use of blogs as a tool for enhancing Filipino student’s competence in English. That was before I started teaching in UP Diliman. Time flies and now, midterms are just around the corner. I guess it’s time to share a few more insights to what I’ve posted before.

I’ve tried factoring in blogging as a requirement particularly in my Basic College English classes. I generally required them to keep journals and their journals will be part of their final grades. Since I was striving for a paperless classroom, I allowed them to just submit their blogs’ URLs for me to check. Out of an average of thirty students in class, only eight (per class) opted to take the online route.

In addition, as an extension service to my students, I opened the forums on this site to serve as a discussion group. As of this writing, it has 579 Posts in 89 Topics by 62 Members. A decent number given that my students are all busy with their other academics too.

In any case, here are some of my experiences so far.

Paperless classroom

An impossibility for now. I probably made a very hasty and erroneous generalization that since most of my students came from private high schools they would have the capability to get Internet access on demand (whether through their homes, hotspots, or net cafes). Most of them are well acquainted with the Web and the Internet to be able to use them for schoolwork but access remains to be a large issue.

While the University has hotspots and terminals all over the campus, majority of students would rather invest in filler-type notebooks and write journal entries manually than having to rent a computer and maintain a blog. This somehow reinforces the fact that only those with computers at home with dedicated Internet access can optimize blogs for practice writing. Judging by the scores so far, the bloggers are also the ones who are already fairly good in the language.

Spoken or Written?

I now think that before we answer the question on whether blogging will aid literacy or not, we must first ask, to which form of the language are we giving more premium – the spoken or the written?

Blogging focuses on written forms of expression. However, focusing on the written may not run parallel to what the business sector wants us to focus on. Businesses emphasize on oral communication that need to be addressed. Realistically speaking, there are many jobs offered by call centers and these can only

Some might argue that podcasting or vidcasting can provide that spoken dimension. However, this would entail another system of interaction that is more complex than plain text blogging where entry posting and commentary is done through writing. In terms of learning speech, intelligibility and accuracy can only be realized through exposure to proper models and mimicking them. So unless the learner has a fair understanding of podcasting and vidcasting technologies, this may not just be feasible. Might as well use focused learning software that provides a specialized interface for speech training.

Forums versus Blogs

One other question that can be raised is, given all the online technologies that we have, why blogging? Given the two technologies that I have been using, I think that an online forums is working better and I can cite at least three reasons.

• Content – Forums offer a more structured layout. These boards can be organized and clustered via topics which provide better focus for learners. In addition, forum posts need less time to compose as opposed to blog entries. This gives a chance to less frequent Net surfers to share something short and sweet into the discussion.
• Feedback – Forums can more or less provide an organized stream of feedback to a topic. In addition, given that language use in forums is conversational, it provides context for the discourse.
• Consolidation – Forums offer a one-stop destination for interacting with fellow learners. This is also an advantage to the teacher/moderator who has full administrative control to everything. Blogs, however, need to have full-content syndication for them to be efficiently added to a comprehensive feed reader list. Still, learners would still have to bloghop in order to post comments. Not to mention, each student takes full-control to his/her blog.

However, there is one thing that I am hypothesizing that may yet use blogging at the same time, drawing upon the advantages of online forums - community blogging. This I believe, will integrate the same consolidation provided by the forums while allowing lengthier discourse.

I have been contemplating whether this would work with my students. Then again, given who the bloggers are, I still think the forums is the better way to go for now.

Check out these other posts:

1. Will blogging for literacy work in the Philippine context?
2. Butch Dalisay’s quick words on what attracts people to blogs and blogging
3. Language studies and blogging
4. Hoping to make it to the 3rd Philippine Blogging Summit
5. Critical discourse analysis and blogging