Reading Prompt 3

What challenges did Soares face when using blogs with her ESL students, and what lessons did she learn?

The challenges that Soares encountered during her implementation of her blog were numerous. Even though at the beginning she felt that her blogs had limitless potential and could be used by her students to communicate with people all over the world, she did not take into account her students’ predisposition to the new technology. As per her own account her students did not interact or made full use of the blog. The lack of involvement were attributed to the lack of access to technology, understanding of the purpose of the blog and its potential as a learning tool, commitment of her student and practitioners involved, time constraints of the participants, and the reasons for not blogging is as diverse as the number of number of people involved. The additional lessons she learned from her experience were the reluctance of some participants to work with other people. This reluctance can be attributed to being able to express independent thoughts and having ownership.

How does she feel about using blogs with students in the future?

Soares still believes that blogs have potential to facilitate language learning. Blogs can be used to promote interaction and cooperative learning. However she realizes that teachers have to address student diversity. The number of blog postings does not determine the usefulness of the blog for certain students (This goes back to diversity). Finally as it was previously stated access to technology and providing classroom time, can facilitate blogging.

Levy describes several types of technologies. Choose one of them and describe how you might want to use it (or have used it), and discuss some of considerations that need to be taken when using this technology with ESL students.

To choose one technology type for language learning or teaching entails limiting the resources. If we take into consideration that learning is as diverse as the participants then, as instructors we should not limit the use of technology and its capacity. As stated in page 217, we should not be using technology for the sake of their potential when something less complicated could be used to learn or teach a language. However, the reading does point to XML and SCORM as the best choice because of its flexibility. The capacity of working within different formats and platforms make it possible for instructors and students not to be limited to one platform or format which can restrict access and/or data loss. The XML capacity of converting files and making those files accessible by different applications virtually eliminates the problem of converting old files into usable material.