Week 7: Social Networks in EFL Learning Settings

Social Networks in EFL Learning Settings

On a personal basis I have to admit that I am not part of any social network. The reason is simple: I do not believe in sharing personal information, videos, or pictures with strangers or acquaintances. But this has been my personal choice. Yet, I have to admit that they can serve as Personal Learning Networks (PLNs).

I cannot see myself using Facebook or Twitter; however, Yahoo Discussions Groups can serve a nice purpose for writing classes or oral communication courses in which you want students to keep the discussion out of class. Yahoo Discussion Groups can be used as a nice platform to work on forum discussions with students that can reflect the content covered in class time or the course objectives. On the same line of work Google Wave can also serve as a means to connect to students and create a class discussion group in which students can discuss, in real time, any issue relevant to the class content.

By talking to my students at Universidad Latina, over here in Costa Rica, I can say that 95% of them have a Facebook account that they regularly check and update. I have gotten several invitations to join some of my former and current students, but I have turned down the offer endlessly. They cannot believe that I do not have a Facebook account and do not seem to understand my reluctance to the creation of one.

Since my students are “digital natives,” what I devised was another way of getting in touch with them. I created a class blog in which I embedded a chat-box to talk to them if they need my assistance. At the university I seem to be the only one who specialized in pronunciation, and I do not have any student attention hour to deal with doubts or questions. After listening to some of my students last term, complaining about the student attention hours, I decided to create a means to get in touch with students when I am working online on my planning or examinations. (Visit my chat-box at http://bin-02.blogspot.com/)

Now that I have read and researched a bit more about PLN, I have to admit that this could be a nice way to foster student autonomy. I would like to try Yahoo! to create a discussion group where students can post their questions and clarify other partners’ doubts with my assistance, as a monitor. I can still invite them to my pronunciation class blog to talk to me, or send me their questions to my institutional email account. But what happens when I am not available? I guess another peer can be responsible for answering any doubt, and then my role will be just monitoring and fostering a PLN for sharing, advice, practices, materials, and links to consolidate learning.

Jonathan Acuña

Universidad Latina

Costa Rica

Monday, November 29, 2010