SFL Bloggers

"Thanks for coming!! Hope you find it useful. We're looking forward to our time together in 'blogspace'. Next time, we hope to be a participant in your own blogspace event!!" Steve Neufeld and Cigdem Tuncergil

Steve wanted to run a face-to-face workshop on using blogs, something he experimented with in the fall semester 2004-2005 with his students at the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management. However, since 10 January he's been on doctor's orders to work at home with his leg elevated--no walking, standing or sitting, so he asked Edward if we could offer the workshop as an online event instead, and Ed gave the nod, so here we are. This is the first time we've tried something quite like this, so we're looking forward to your feedback!

Now, to be specific, we've put together this blogspace event for us to discuss the issues involved in using blogs in the EMU context. We have two main objectives:

• You will be expected to take part in the main blogspace as a fully-fledged member, and also create your own.
• As this medium is new to most of us, we'll be sharing our experiences via the media itself, and learn from each other as we go along.

So, in the end, we're hoping all of us will have our personal blogs, perhaps a tutor blog or even a class blog as well. Those of us who become enamoured with blogs might attempt to get our students to create their own learner blogs. Then, at the end of it all, we can compare notes and see where we've succeeded, where we haven't perhaps been so successful, and toss some ideas around for the future.

The audience we have in mind is initially forSFL instructors with little or no experience in creating blogs who would like to use this technology for educational purposes, but don't know how to get started. However, oursubject-matter colleagues in the faculties and schools can easily use blogs with their courses. In fact, nowadays in America many professors have their own tutor blogs as a matter of course.

This blogspace event actually began with the idea to run a face-to-face workshop for the 2005 SFL one-day conference on 11 Feburary. However, due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, Steve was confined to working at home. So, we've put together the following outline of activities that we'll follow for the duration of this event. Each week's plan will be introduced as we progress through the sessions. This shouldn't take more than 1 hour for the first three weeks, and then after that we'll be exploring our own blogs and reporting back whenever we have time.

This week we will:

• get started with some introductory readings about weblogs,
• join the group event blog as members,
• contribute postings and make comments in our group blog.

We will be examining various types of weblogs currently being used in ESL/EFL and other environments to:

• see how collegues in the field of education are using them, and
• get some ideas for starting our own.

During this time, we will be sharing our weblogs and responding to each others' efforts. We will:

• reflect on our experience with blogging.
• consider ways to involve students in our blogging activities.
• share final comments on the blogspace event..

How we'll communicate during the blogspace event:

The entire workshop will be run in blogspace, so we'll be sharing our ideas via discussion postings in our group event blog (http://sflbloggers.blogspot.com) and via shared links to our personal blogs. If needed, we can also arrange to get together via a chat room for a live discussion of any of the topics that come to light.