2. Effectiveness of Blogging to
Practice Reading at a Freshman
EFL Program
Bertha leiva de Izquierdo
Leticia Esteves Reyes

3. Are we really helping our students
acquire skills that will be crucial in
their future?

4. Are we using learning resources
that will make them connect
socioculturally and learn from
the interactions among
themselves and others?

5. Vygotsky

6. Internet in our daily routines
✤ Access is becoming cheaper and
more more available.
✤ cable
✤ sattelite
✤ wireless

7. Internet in our daily routines
✤ Many learners are ✤ English - authentic
born and grow up material.
with technology as
a natural and
integrated part of
their lives.

8. Technophobes X Technogeeks

9. Digital Natives X Digital Immigrants

10. Problem!
✤ “Most misunderstandings
come from the differences
between how
digital students learn and
non-digital teachers
teach.”

11. “...we have wanted to empower students give
students,
them more freedom and responsibility about
their own learning, and provide them with the
right environment that would foster
sociocultural and collaborative interaction
interaction,
promote autonomous learning and help them
learn to learn.”
learn

12. empower students
sociocultural and collaborative interaction
right environment responsibility
freedom learn to learn

13. “23,000 new blogs are created every day - about one
every three sconds”

14. Why?
✤ open source
✤ easy to handle
✤ different interactions:
✤ student-teacher
✤ student-student
✤ student-others

15. ✤ Multimedia environment: videos, images, songs, and
podcasts.
✤ Each student is given a chance to participate equally.
✤ “Shyness” becomes less relevant.
✤ Anytime and anywhere

16. The study
✤ 625 students resgistered in a
freshman EFL reading
program.
Universidad Simón Bolívar
Caracas, Venezuela

17. ✤ 72.4% of students agreed that the blog had helped
them become more autonomous in their learning
process and less dependent on the teachers.

18. ✤ The creation of environments to motivate
students learning beyond the classroom should
be part of the role of technology in the 21st
Century education and a responsibility for
foreign language teachers who prepare students
to think critically, take social responsibility,
analyze problems and provide possible
solutions to them.

19. toughcallinesl.blogspot.com