Lesson plan

1. At the beginning of the module, students complete a questionnaire about their experience with technology and teaching. Tilly uses this questionnaire to break the group into smaller mixed-ability groups called ‘Blogging Buddy’ groups.
2. Students attend an ‘Introduction to Blogging’ session. In this session, they look at the theory behind blogging as a tool and are also introduced to the platform Blogger, where they will be posting their blogs.
3. Students look at influential blogs from English language teaching and evaluate each blog using a template that looks at organisation, content, interactivity and audience etc.
4. Students then have the opportunity to write their first blog, which is a review of one of the blogs they have looked at so far. This blog is not assessed and instead Tilly uses this as an opportunity to give the students some initial feedback and encouragement by commenting on each blog.
5. Following this, students begin blogging regularly throughout the module. This part of the process is fairly independent and there is no weekly deadline.
6. In their ‘Blogging Buddy’ groups, students are encouraged to read and comment on each other’s blogs regularly. Students self-report how many comments they have made or received on a Wiki page. Tilly uses this to award prizes to the students who comment the most, however the comments are not assessed as part of the assignment.
7. Students are offered the opportunity to give feedback on the module half-way through.
8. At the end of the module students upload a single sheet with a link to their blog on it, alongside an academic essay on the pedagogic uses of blogging.
9. Tilly gives her feedback to students via a recorded screencast, which shows how she navigated and interacted with the blog.