ARPHA Proceedings 3: 669-680, doi: 10.3897/ap.2.e0669
Blogging as a Tool to Organize the Profession-oriented Independent Work of Future Teachers
expand article infoAndrey A. Gareyev, Olga F. Shikhova, Yuri A. Shikhov, Yulia V. Krasavina
Open Access
Abstract
The relevance of the study in question is caused by the growth of students’ independent work and the need to train future teachers so that they can organize this work more effectively using modern technologies. One of the optimal information and communication technologies for organizing students’ independent work is blogging. Therefore, this paper explores the attitude of future teachers towards blogging, its potential forms of use in organizing students’ independent work.The key research method to study this problem, in our case, has been the survey of Vocational Training students. It helped us to determine what future teachers think about blogging as a teaching tool, what skills they have and do not have for this, and also the problems that a teacher may face when organizing students’ independent work with blogging.This paper discusses the main features of blogging as a teaching tool. The criteria for assessing the results of student blogging, the stages of student blogging following the authors’ methodology, are presented.Moreover, the article shows the results of experimental work where the Vocational Training students have been writing their blogs in Russian for over a month. In the research, it was found that student-bloggers lack independent thinking, while the majority of participants would prefer to use blogging in their future teaching activities.The results of our research conclude that the use of blogging to organize students’ independent work facilitates the development of the required competencies such as professional language competence. Furthermore, it is proven that the experience and skills of blogging provide more opportunities for educators in their job and career.
Keywords
profession-oriented blogging, blog, students’ independent work, professional language competence, vocational teacher, professional training