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      Virtual Forums: A Pedagogical Tool for Collaboration and Learning in Teacher Education Translated title: Explorando el valor pedagógico de los foros virtuales y los blogs para promover la colaboración y el aprendizaje: una experiencia de formación del profesorado

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          Abstract

          Implementing technological tools in EFL classes has not been easy for language teachers, they often struggle to make class activities consistent with the curriculum, policies, students' needs and likes and lately, with computer and internet-based ICTs. The problem regularly is that EFL teachers do not possess the pedagogical and technological knowledge to use technological tools to foster communication and interaction among students to learn collaboratively. This study deals with a teacher education experience in which tools such as blogs, learning software, e-mail, forums and internet-based tools were used to improve EFL learning and teaching. Data were gathered from the group of EFL teachers in two phases: the first phase included participants' planning, discussion, and implementation of a pedagogical project for young EFL learners; the second phase consisted of the participants' reporting and evaluating their performance using forums and blogs with their students. The study demonstrated that teacher education experiences are crucial for teacher learning to integrate the use of forums and blogs in the EFL Curriculum. It also showed that the use of blogs and forums requires addressing language pedagogy from a perspective that values communication, collaboration and participation as central elements of learning.

          Translated abstract

          La implementación de herramientas tecnológicas en las clases de inglés como lengua extranjera no ha sido fácil para los profesores de idiomas, quienes a menudo tienen dificultades para realizar actividades de clase coherentes con el plan de estudios, las políticas educativas, las necesidades de los estudiantes y últimamente, con las TIC que se encuentran en internet. El problema es que los profesores de inglés como lengua extranjera, en su mayoría, no poseen los conocimientos pedagógicos y tecnológicos para utilizar las herramientas apropiadas que puedan fomentar la comunicación y la interacción entre los estudiantes para aprender colaborativamente. Este estudio trata de una experiencia de formación docente en el que herramientas como los blogs, software de aprendizaje, e-mail, foros y herramientas tomadas de internet se utiliza para mejorar el aprendizaje y la enseñanza de inglés como lengua extranjera. Los datos fueron recogidos a partir de la participación del grupo de profesores en dos fases: la primera fase consiste en la planeación, discusión y ejecución de un proyecto pedagógico para los niños que aprenden el inglés como lengua extranjera, la segunda fase consistió en la información dada por los participantes con la presentación de informes y evaluación de su desempeño por medio de foros y blogs con sus alumnos. El estudio demostró que las experiencias de formación docente son cruciales para el aprendizaje docente para integrar el uso de los foros y los blogs en el currículo de inglés como lengua extranjera. También mostró que en el uso de blogs y foros es necesario abordar la pedagogía del lenguaje desde una perspectiva que valora la comunicación, colaboración y participación como elementos centrales del aprendizaje.

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          Qualitative data analysis for applied policy research

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            Perspectives on Technology in Learning and Teaching Languages

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              Blogging: A way to foster EFL writing

              This article reports on the results of an action-research project carried out with a group of first year university students from an "English Program" at a public university in Bogotá. The project aimed to gain insights into EFL writing and to analyze the role that feedback played in the process of writing. The experience was implemented through the interaction of two groups of students, one from Colombia and the other from Canada, who interacted regularly by means of using blogs. Students were provided with three different spaces: a personal blog in which they wrote about topics of personal interest, a group blog that allowed students to work and write cooperatively, and a debate blog that required the use of argumentative writing. The findings of this research suggest that EFL writing is greatly developed when students feel part of a community to interact with and to share similar interests and language learning goals which are mediated, in this case, by technology. It was also found that by writing in blogs students not only developed their writing but more importantly, students have the possibility to portray and show their own selves through the written pieces they post. Finally, the feedback was found to be benefcial in EFL writing as it was a crucial ingredient that gave student-writers tools to scaffold in the writing process.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                calj
                Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal
                Colomb. Appl. Linguist. J.
                Facultad de Ciencias y Educación de la Universidad Distrital, Bogotá Colombia (Bogotá, Distrito Capital, Colombia )
                0123-4641
                July 2011
                : 13
                : 2
                : 29-42
                Affiliations
                [02] Bogotá orgnameUniversidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas Colombia
                [01] Cundinamarca orgnameUniversidad de la Sabana Colombia
                Article
                S0123-46412011000200003 S0123-4641(11)01300203
                ad0dbc5a-7c98-495c-a27c-ecd8446d9e3e

                This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

                History
                : 03 November 2011
                : 01 September 2011
                Page count
                Figures: 0, Tables: 0, Equations: 0, References: 18, Pages: 14
                Product

                SciELO Colombia

                Self URI: Full text available only in PDF format (EN)
                Categories
                Research articles

                formación de docentes,collaboration and participation for learning,EFL pedagogy with blogs and virtual forums,teacher education,usando foros virtuales y blogs,Enseñanza del Ingles como lengua extranjera

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