LEARNING PEDAGOGY THROUGH BLOGS: AN EXPERIENCE IN INITIAL TEACHER TRAINING

Abstract

\'Blogging\' - a contraction of the term \'web logging\' - is perhaps best described as a form of micro-publishing. Easy to use, from any Internet connection point, blogging has become firmly established as a web based communications tool. Blogs have become a new and innovative learning-teaching and assessment tool. In this context advances in IT-based knowledge acquisition and collaboration tools are now providing an opportunity to move beyond traditional learning. Even if the subject of blogs in general is widely debated (e.g. Barger 1997; Doctorow et al. 2002; Du & Wagner 2005; Brune 2008) , there is not a lot of refereed published material on the subject of blogs in education, in general, or teacher training, in particular (e.g. Oravec 2003,Snyder 2009). The aim of this paper is to analyse the use of blogs as teaching-learning and assesment tool in a course in initial teacher education. Moreover we identify the limitations and pitfalls of using blogs as group activity in the field of teacher education in order to improve future practice. The data for this study was gathered using satisfaction questionnaires for students and observations made by the teachers engaged in this experience. The premise from which we started using this approach was the development of a range of ICT competencies in using weblogs, specific and professional competencies, in order to prepare student teachers for their work as teachers in the new educational context. Using blogs as an assessment tool had also the purpose to track students’ learning progress by giving weekly assignments, in order to avoid leaving all the study to the time of the final examination. This way the teacher’s role was to support rather than to direct. This experience took place during the first semester of the academic year 2011/2012 and engaged a number of 180 students engaged in initial teacher training that were attending the course Pedagogy II at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Science from the University of Bucharest who created 46 blogs. There were two types of blogs developed in this course: teachers’ blog, used for publishing handouts, references, for sharing knowledge and providing instructions; student blog used to submit their assignments. The student blogs were e-portfolios of assigned tasks, which were focused on developing the students’ competencies in planning a lesson. In order to reach the purpose stated before we used a case study approach. In order to evaluate the experience we employed a satisfaction questionnaire and an observation sheet. We are currently involved in the data analysis. The first results suggestthat blogs prove their utility in developing the learning process of the students engaged in initial teacher education. This enables us to agree upon the fact that it is an effective practice and that it brings a range of benefits to those who practise it. However, further research needs to be carried out in order to find ways to improve this practice by identifing the best methods to use blogs in teacher education and to keep it up to date in a field that is continuously changing.