Last CALL: Like 'em or Leave 'em?

Over the course of the past sixteen weeks, I have been bringing you my take on various technological tools that can be used in the classroom to enhance the learning environment. I have also been using a blog in my Materials class to use as a platform for my online portfolio. Prior to beginning this semester, I had little experience with blogs; I had only seen them as places where people divulge too much information about their personal lives, and I subsequently paid little attention to them. During the semester, many people had a wide range or reactions to keeping a blog. I heard everything from, "I really like to have a place online to reflect about my practices" to "These blogs are the bane of my existence, and they make me hate my life."I think there are many lessons to be learned from these reactions in my cohort.

First of all, people should not be made to blog on a regular basis if they find it to be tedious because written reflection should probably not be forced. It goes against the grain of the philosophy behind writing a reflection. Reflections should occur naturally and not be forced for that reason. Second, students who do not like to keep a blog maybe should be given an alternative assignment like perhaps creating or constructing something that they find to be more useful of their time for future professional tracks. Third, if an instructor wants to integrate blogs, he or she should be monitoring them as well as students should be monitoring each others' blogs. If the instructor is not watching the blogs, the students may pick up on it and become lazy especially if the responses tend to be forced. There should be an audience if students are expected to write to make the assignment more authentic. Forth, there needs to be clear guidelines for what the students are to blog about each week, how long the blogs should be, and how often the students should be checking their blogs and commenting on one another's postings.

Personally, I really like having my portfolio on wordpress.com because I know that it will be very useful for me when I am looking for a job next year. I am glad I now know more about the many ways a blog platform can be used. I will probably try to keep blogging in the future and make use of them in my teaching practices. However, I will keep in mind that there is the possibility for a lot of resistance and resentment from students who are opposed to having scheduled reflections every week.

I think the ability of a blog assignment to succeed with students depends a lot on structure in the assignments, a sound rationale behind assigning the tasks, and good reasoning behind using the blog platform. Without any one of these components the assignment may cause a lot of frustration, and students don't like to feel that they are engaging in busy work.