Internet Blog as a Multimedia Text in Pedagogical Discourse

Abstract

The article reveals the issues of introducing and using one of the innovative methods in pedagogy, identifies the features of pedagogical discourse emerging from this in the format of Internet blogs, and contains an analysis of specific Internet blogs in pedagogical practice. The purpose of this study is to identify factors contributing to the successful integration of an Internet blog as a multimedia text into traditional pedagogical discourse. The object of the study is the pedagogical discourse, and the subject of the study is the features of the functioning of the Internet blog as a multimedia text in the pedagogical discourse. This study is carried out at the intersection of considering the components of the professional activity of teachers and views on the problem of introducing and using an innovative teaching tool in pedagogy, which brings changes to the pedagogical discourse in the format of a multimedia text, namely an Internet blog. The phenomenon of pedagogical discourse in the digital educational environment has shown itself to be a new form of traditional pedagogical discourse, which is traditionally considered within the framework of a real class. Changing the broadcasting platform of the teacher from face-to-face to online introduces its own rules and adjustments to the communication between the teacher and the student.

Keywords: Communication, internet blog, multimedia text, pedagogical discourse, value

Introduction

An important factor influencing the process of education is the means of education. In addition to the content of teaching aids, these means influence the development of imagination, attention, consolidation of knowledge and thinking of students. A single definition that would fully reveal the concept of a learning tool has not yet been formed. There is an opinion that the means of teaching are subjects through which scientific information is transmitted in the learning process and an educational impact on students is carried out for the purpose of education and upbringing. The learning process is provided by the learning materials themselves and by certain means by which the teaching material is transmitted (Katermina 2019; Katermina & Zhestkova 2018; Mohsen, 2012; Salta et al., 2021). All teaching aids are used for the sole purpose of developing the competencies necessary for the student, which contribute to the development of certain skills and abilities indicated by the curriculum.

Speaking about the main teaching aids, one should also remember about additional means, the use of which in percentage terms has begun to increase within the framework of modern pedagogical discourse.

Problem Statement

Questions about the features of text organization in the network inspired discursive-linguistic research. This is partly due to the ingrained notion that digital communication as a whole is displaced, detached and separated from the physical world, and that it takes place in a more or less abstract "cyberspace". A blog is a personal diary that is posted on the Internet, has a bright personality, original content and its own audience. Unlike real diaries, which are read only by the authors themselves, entries in Internet diaries, the so-called posts (“post”-note, message), are usually posted for public viewing. The theme, content, links to articles and other sites on the topic of the blog, readers' comments, etc. are responsible for the composition of the blog. A blog, as an example of a network text, is an actual communication and a living form of writing. The volume and form of presentation of information, the features and details of the linguistics of the text, when properly analyzed, help to interpret time, society and culture. Modern culture is especially mediatized, the production and implementation of a heterogeneous text goes on non-stop, and there is no control over the construction of the text in accordance with logic and verbal-written rules and norms of the language. We are witnessing the creation of some new reality, the blurring of those traditions that are predetermined by the structure of meanings, the logic of signs and the norms of writing (Russell & Murphy-Judy, 2020; Zhestkova, 2017). It should be remembered that the educational process, to be successful and productive, must arouse students' interest, the desire to actively participate in communication, and be ready to support it. When learning using an educational blog, this interest is already a priori, since students are very interested in using an already ordinary means of communication or media space for something new-kilearning a foreign language, for example. An educational blog is a collection of educational materials and news of a certain educational group (for example, a class) or an educational institution (school, university), as well as an environment for systematizing the accumulated experience, reflection, communication.

Research Questions

Blogging is not an easy task. Only knowing the advantages and possibilities of this media activity in pedagogical practice, users can create their own educational blog. Consider the advantages of this modern technique. There are many places on the Internet to publish including a large number of social networks. While the safest option is to have your own blogging platform to host posts, and then use other platforms – the easiest way is to create a blog under the guise of a public page on one of the ready-made platforms. On them, the teacher can publish everything necessary for classes, collected not from textbooks, but also compiled independently or borrowed from educational forums, additional materials. Everything you need in the public domain will reduce the need for students to look elsewhere for supporting materials. They will have more time to concentrate on the material without wasting time looking for it. A blog can be regarded as some space to post the material that have been created and researched both online and offline. This may include videos, podcasts, graphic designs, articles, links, etc. You can blog year after year and thus it can be a means to have access to educational materials that will also be monitored by students and teachers. Teachers note that since they started blogging, students' literacy has been on the rise. By integrating blogs into the curriculum, students can enhance their literacy skills and at the same time increase their level of interest and involvement in the learning process. There are so many new skills and competencies that are needed to successfully master the life of the XXI century. These new competencies consist of digital citizenship, curation, appraisal, visual literacy. There are also important skills including problem solving, critical thinking, and cultural awareness. A blog can offer an ideal path to develop skills in an authentic and permanent way. Online communication encourages students who are embarrassed to speak in class to share their ideas too. Subsequently, this can lead to the establishment of connections between classmates in real life. Being a perfect means to teach and learn literacy blogs can be also used in any subject area: you can show learning material, share thoughts, post requests for questions, and implement tools. Blogging allows creativity and an ability to express yourself visually with headlines, photos, layouts. Effective communication between home and school is vital since it allows families to use the class (or student) blog as a virtual window into the classroom. With comments and feedback, both parents and children can be a part of what's going on in the classroom. While some people might say that blogging and social media can hinder the development of social skills, blogging is actually an amazing beginning. It lets people practice communication skills, empathy and so on. Teachers admit that they have also used blogs to teach students to be polite and considerate to others. There are simple ways to do this, such as setting a rule of thumb for blogging towards others. Blogging helps to become digitally literate. Through blogging, many skills can be practiced. Some of them are more specific to blogging (e.g. using plugins, tags/categories, etc.) while others are more general ICT skills (e.g. using images, managing passwords, etc.).

Constant consumption of information is not a good way to learn or to develop but blogs can be a great means to introduce critical thinking into the classroom curriculum. Blogging requires collaboration: both teachers and teaches learn and share ideas, experiences, impressions, opinions together. A sense of community and class identity can be developed through blogging. Teachers note that students, demonstrating their work, ask each other: “How did you do it?” So, the teacher acts as the only expert in the class, able to advise something and say how best. Students can communicate with each other and be media “tutors” for each other. In the “traditional” classroom, the only audience for research is the teacher, classmates, and sometimes parents while blogs can provide a much larger audience for student work. Blogs provide an opportunity for feedback and self-improvement using comments. Students really take pride in the work being done on the blog and want to do the best for their audience. Motivation increases when they write with a purpose in mind. The learner needs autonomy, skill and purpose to feel motivated. When publishing on the Internet, students have a chance to express themselves, to demonstrate their voice. Students can write about their hobbies, challenges, learning, and more. They can feel they can change the world and can help others understand them. Of course, there is an element of risk in expressing your feelings and thoughts, but with support, it can really bring benefits. Understanding and tolerance can be developed between classmates and the teacher, and students can learn a lot more about the society and environment.

We know that PC and Internet usually occupy a lot of time since students enjoy "playing" online. Whether it's spending time on social media or playing online games, much time can still be wasted. Some break is required from time to time, but why not take advantage of that interest in online life by doing something purposeful and productive? Blogging gives an opportunity to communicate, create content, and have fun learning and making changes.

Blogs provide a truly diverse educational experience. It may not be comfortable at the outset, it may take a lot of work to try to integrate this activity into the classroom, but once you can immerse yourself in it, many new opportunities will open up for everyone involved in education.

However, for every modern method there comes a stage when you also need to take into account the cons. Some students who have lower digital skills may find blogging difficult. For some, this is still an unfamiliar method and way of learning, which can be annoying due to its inaccessibility. Modern students are very advanced in the use of modern technological tools, but there are exceptions to everything. Students may not have equal access to technological resources. Insufficiently high-speed Internet, one shared computer per family, and other factors can hamper the introduction of blogs into the scientific environment. Even a small percentage of students will at least sometimes have difficulty adapting to innovations. Blogging basically distracts students from their studies by consuming the Internet. This is one of the most dangerous effects of blogging for students because they are distracted from the actual study or work. In some cases, students prefer Internet surfing over learning, and as a result, this reduces their academic score. But with the right discipline and an account of one's actions, this should not happen. Blogging basically causes students to isolate themselves from their society. The Internet world is sometimes very captivating that sometimes they sometimes do not even want to devote time to their family members and relatives. This trend speaks to the emerging dependence of people on the Internet, which must be combated. As discussed earlier, blogging is labor intensive and time consuming. The practical implementation of an Internet blog in the traditional learning process may look like this: 1) pre-text stage: sending a lexical task to a group of students a few days before the lesson, focused on removing the difficulties of understanding the text of the planned listening (for example, combining set expressions with their equivalents, using lexical units in sentences). Thus, the group will come to the lesson already prepared for the vocabulary that will be presented in listening; 2) text stage: listening to the recording. The recording can also be sent to students in advance or directly at the beginning of the lesson with a request to play it on a special device. The task at the stage can be the insertion of missing words in the text; 3) post-text stage: questions for understanding the listened material, commenting, retelling, forming one's own opinion on the topic raised. So, using the example of listening, the rest of the activities in the classroom can be planned and organized in stages using a blog at each stage or selectively.

Like everything that has not yet become a habit or tradition, the use of blogs in educational activities has its advantages and disadvantages as well. However, the number of advantages and benefits of this method are clearly in the lead, which proves the high appreciation of the effectiveness of this innovation. It is very important for the teacher to be aware of the impact of blogs on students and the possible positive and negative consequences of blogging in order to respond and help the student at the right time. The preponderance of the benefits is followed by the conclusion that the use of blogs in educational activities is reasonable.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to identify factors contributing to the successful integration of an Internet blog as a multimedia text into traditional pedagogical discourse. The object of our study is pedagogical discourse, and the subject of the study is the features of the functioning of an Internet blog as a multimedia text in pedagogical discourse. This study is carried out at the intersection of considering the components of the professional activity of teachers and views on the problem of introducing and using an innovative teaching tool in pedagogy, which brings changes to the pedagogical discourse in the format of a multimedia text, namely an Internet blog.

Research Methods

In this study, the following methods were used: the method of structural analysis to consider the components of the blog and its types; a synthesis method for characterizing the features of pedagogical discourse, mental modeling for planning the stages of creating an educational blog, observation and description were used to identify the main types of Internet blogs most used in pedagogical discourse integrated into the traditional process of the educational environment.

Findings

After conducting a survey of the opinions of participants in the pedagogical discourse, namely students (80 people) and teachers (80 people), for what purposes it is more convenient and efficient to use an Internet blog for educational purposes, we got the following results (Figure 1):

See Full Size >

Respondents could choose several options from the proposed list since it is almost impossible to choose only one purpose for using an Internet blog in pedagogical discourse. As it can be seen from the data obtained, the most applicable in the educational process as an additional means of teaching an Internet blog is a team-blog (class), since, according to the survey participants, this type of Internet blog allows you to provide a full cycle of the educational process: the interaction of participants in the educational process in such a way how it is possible to do it in a traditional class. Students receive assignments from the teacher, the teacher here gives feedback to each student, but the most important thing that the participants note is that all participants in the discourse can see their progress, as well as extract useful information for the learning process from the answers of other students and from the teacher's comments on the answers received. It is not surprising that the teachers found the use of the Internet blog – the team blog (teachers’ team) practically useless for the learning process, since this type of blog is created only for teachers to communicate without information for students. However, among teachers, this type of blog does not find a great response, since maintaining or participating in this type of blog requires a lot of free time, which is practically absent from the teacher. The teachers note that the interaction and exchange of innovative knowledge between them takes place at scientific and practical conferences in person and in the texts of research articles in scientific specialized publications asynchronously. Participants in the pedagogical discourse believe that a topic-blog, a newspaper-blog, and a notebook-blog successfully fit into a team-blog (class), since these types of tasks provide effective knowledge acquisition and development of the skills necessary for the learning process. The project-blog is popular among educators as they find it a very convenient way to track the progress of students on each step of the project and get the result in the form of a completed project. So, an Internet blog in traditional pedagogical discourse can bring together all class announcements, assignments, and exercises in one place; provide students with a workspace to exchange thoughts, drafts, or projects in a relatively low-stakes environment; provide a place for learners to feel free to “talk” and share ideas

Conclusion

As traditional classrooms change around the world, and as current and future careers depend on strong computer skills, blogging helps students develop the necessary skills and competencies for their continuing education and gainful employment. The world of blogging should be seen as a creative, fun way to overcome illiteracy through the curriculum while also embracing other learning standards.

References

• Cleveland-Innes, M. F., & Garrison, D. R. (2020). An Introduction to Distance Education. Understanding Teaching and Learning in a New Era, (2nd Ed.). Routledge.

• Dillenbourg, P. (2016). The Evolution of Research on Digital Education. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 26, 544–560. DOI:

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Jiang, W. (2017). Interdependence of roles, role rotation, and sense of community in an online course. Distance Education, 38(1), 84–105.

• Katermina, V. (2019). E-learning in the Foreign Language Teaching Context. Society. Integration. Education. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference, III, 473-478.

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Katermina, V., & Zhestkova, E. (2018) Application of the WebQuest Technology in the Organization of the Independent Work of Students in the Process of Studying Disciplines. Proceedings of the 11th Innovation in Language Learning International Conference. Folidiritto Editore.

• Khrapov, S. A., & Baeva, L. V. (2020). Cognitive Risks of Education Digitalization: Crisis Transformation of Student Consciousness and the Problem of Forming Safe Communicative-Educational Environment. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference “Digitalization of Education: History, Trends and Prospects” (DETP 2020). DOI:

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Manijeh, S. (2019). A shift from classroom to distance learning: advantages and limitations. Sadeghi International Journal of Research in English Education, 4(1), 80-88. DOI: 10.29252/ijree.4.1.80

• Mohsen, F. F. (2012). Ethics Principles in Distance Education. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 46, 890-894. DOI:

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Moore, M. G. (2013). The theory of transactional distance. In M. G. Moore (Ed.) Handbook of distance education (3rd Ed.). Routledge.

• Murthy, D. (2018). Introduction to Social Media, Activism, and Organizations. Social Media + Society, 1–4. DOI:

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Russell, V., & Murphy-Judy K. (2020). Teaching language online: A guide for designing, developing, and delivering online, blended, and flipped language courses. Routledge.

• Salta, K., Paschalidou, K., Tsetseri, M., & Koulougliotis, D. (2021). Shift from a traditional to a distance learning environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Science & Education, 31. DOI:

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Zhestkova, E. (2017). Interactive technologies as a means of forming cultural and professional competencies among students of pedagogical institutes. Society. Integration. Education.

• Zinkovskaya, A. V., Katermina, V. V., & Plaxin, V. A. (2020). Remote Technologies in the Field of Foreign Language Teaching as a Part of the Digital Education Ecosystem. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference “Digitalization of Education: History, Trends and Prospects” (DETP 2020), 685-688. DOI: 10.2991/assehr.k.200509.122