The Use of Websites and Blogs as a Tool for Establishing Better Learning Outcomes

The use of Websites and blogs as a tool for estabilishing better learning outcomes.

ABSTRACT

Internet Websites and Blogs (also known as Digital Learning Environments), which are two new development technologies that provide better teaching-learning environments, interactive and inter-creative engagements for teachers and students, were not very common until recently, however, these technologies have taken a great role in the world of education and have become more dominant and widespread among and favored by foreign language learners and teachers who would like to extend their studies actively away from classrooms. Additionally, these websites and web-blogs can be used to enhance the quality of education by encouraging reflective practice, meditative homework assignments, and sharing online educational topics outside schoolwork and college learning through the use of web-blogs and thus making it less possible for students to waste their time.
This paper will focus mainly on the purpose, usability and possibilities of websites and blogs. The objectives of this paper is to indicate the importance of using these tools among learners, teachers and schools, to show how education can be better, easy to learn and enjoyable through the use of websites and blogs in education, and also to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using these tools in school and classrooms.

Contents

A- Website……………………………………………………………….1
1-what is website?.................................................................................
2-the importance of website…………………………………………. 3-advantages and dis advantages of website………………………… B-Blog…………………………………………………………………….. 1-what is blog?...................................................................................... 2-the importance of blog……………………………………………… 3-advantages and disadvantages of blog……………………………… C-The use of websites and blogs in education………………………… 1-development of weblog in education…………………….. 2-How education could be better through the use of weblog.. 3-Purpose of using websites and blogs in education……………………. D-Benefits of using website and blog in education …………………….. 1-Benefits of using website and blog for students teachers and schools a-Benefits for students…………………………………………… b-Benefits for teachers and schools………………………………. 2-Using website and blog in the classroom a-Classroom management b- Collaboration c- Discussions

A-website
. A website is a place on the Internet where you can find information about something, especially a particular organization . This definition is a clear explanation of what is already perceived and known by anyone. We would like to expand the understanding by adding that websites are digital spaces that can be employed for any particular purpose such as education, business, personal interest(s), etc. where not only information can be found but people can interact with one another synchronously (chat rooms), play games (online game rooms), buy goods by using their credit cards, make flight, holiday or hotel reservations, etc. In our specific case, the focus is on educational websites that concentrate on English as a foreign language and in general education in schools for learners and teacher who would like to get and learn information and their lessons online. So, what learners can do in EFL websites is improving their vocabulary and grammar by doing online exercises, taking tests, practicing writing, reading, and listening skills through tasks that are designed by professionals and teachers,

1-What is a website?

A website, also written as Web site,web site, or simply site, is a set of related web pages containing content such as text,images, video, audio, etc. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a privatelocal area network through an Internet address known as a Uniform Resource Locator. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web A site (location) on the World Wide Web. Each Web site contains a home page, which is the first document users see when they enter the site. The site might also contain additional documents and files. Each site is owned and managed by an individual, company or organization.

2-The importance of website

Internet has become one of the largest platforms of communication and has got great importance among teachers, students and schools. It is the most effective technology available today. Building a website for school can prove to be extremely beneficial if it is done in the right way. It maybe time consuming and include a lot of effort to be put in for developing a website for the school, but it is very advantageous for the school community. The school website gives the school's information and also clear idea about what they are good at. School websites will provide the up to dates, as well as help them to link between schools, their communities and also to the entire world.The main importance of website for school to connect student and teacher to the education and as well as parents can easily follow the instructions of their children,and parents become more aware about the schools functioning, and also feel involved. Through the websites parents can be easily informed about the upcoming events like activities, exams and also tips that could help children. Thus websites play a vital role in removing the barrier between parents and the school.
With the help of websites teacher's can share their views and ideas with the rest of the faculty as well as the parents.The website makes it easier for the parents to give the school and the teachers their valuable feedback.Parents get the opportunity to become well versed with the education system of their child.
The website provides a platform for the school to build contacts and link with business, families as well as other schools. Especially for families who relocate very often, these websites become great sources for them.
Many a times people tend to consider the school website to be a substitute for all the face-to-face interactions. It is a very wrong notion that they hold. The website should be perceived as an extra resource benefit provided to the world by the schools.
1-advantages and disadvantages of websites

Having a website, whether for personal or business purposes, is now commonplace.
A potent promotional tool of the school's services and facilities. Websites could take the place of more costly traditional billboards and flyers. Further, with websites the world, rather than the locality, is your audience. Add credibility and build positive image of schools especially it is well designed, has quality content and periodically updated. Avenue for an interactive information exchange. With added website features such as chat room, school websites facilitates immediate response to queries about the school. Can serve as an online school database. The school can upload a bunch of information about the school into the website. This can serve as an online filing cabinet which is more efficient compared to our traditional filing system. With the search button in your website, your reader can readily access the data uploaded in your website.A virtual office which is open 24 hours a day seven days a week. This saves money and time which could be used to other investment priorities of the schools. 6. A venue for implementing a feedback mechanism. Because it is very convenient to use the Internet, visitors could easily post feedback on school services and other related issues which they would not bother with telephones and letters. With the interactive feature of your website, you can readily respond to the queries and issues. A venue for hands-on learning tool for students and faculty especially so if the school offers information technology related courses.
These are just among the many advantages of building school websites which can be up and running with a very minimal investment. The only recurring costs are domain registration, hosting services and remuneration for website administration.
Creation of an effective school websites however, does not happen overnight. By being effective, it would mean that the website is able to maximize the benefits as earlier presented. Careful planning should be the first step. Further, getting qualified and reliable people for the website project are necessary condition for a successful website. Outsourcing experts for the project can be cost effective, but is to the advantage of the school if there are in-house experts contracted on a long term basis for reasons of project sustainability.
If you would like to get an affordable expert who can build an effective school website.
Websites take a long time to design. You need to figure out where you want your navigation bar, your list of products or other information, as well as your ads. On top of that you need to figure out a color scheme that will attract your visitors so that they will not be turned off by it, but instead keep coming back. This is rather time consuming, as you may think you got the perfect design, but others may not agree with you. If that happens you basically get to start all over again.
Another thing to consider about a website is that it requires that you manually link all of your pages together. A blogging software does this for you automatically. Additionally, you may also have to manually update your feeds to let others know about your new Websites usually do not allow users to comment, and therefore if you are looking to interact with your users a blog may be more suitable than a website content. There are some advantages and disadvantages below.

Advantages * The information is available to be accessed by anyone, anywhere, anytime. * The information within a site can be quickly accessed. There is no need to sift through several pages. * The site may provide links to other sites on the same topic * The site can be updated to always provide the latest information. * The site creator/author doesn’t need to be present when someone is retrieving information. * The author can usually be contacted through an emailing address or a message board connected to the site. * There is no need to carry a hard copy of information with you. (No heavy book) * You can look at more than one page or source at the one time by having numerous windows. * Information is easy to gather and print selectively. * Easy to use the information to create your own resource. * You can peruse the information at leisure taking as much time as needed. * Saves a trip to the library.

Disadvantages * It may be difficult for researchers to locate, especially if there are many similar sites. * Because it is not “published” or authorized by a reputable source, the site may be disregarded as inaccurate. * The information on the site may not be reliable. * Information may be interpreted incorrectly or used inappropriately. * A connection to the web is needed to access the information, which will be impossible if a computer and connection is not available. * It may be difficult to reach your target audience. * Because the author is not present when others are retrieving information there is no opportunity to ask questions or have things explained in greater detail etc. * The site may go down or the computer may crash. * Site may be difficult to use if experience with the internet is limited.

B-Blog
The term blog is a blend of the terms web and log, leading to web log, weblog, and finally blog. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called blogging. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a blogger.
Blog is one of the platforms where you can reach the updated information aobut not only language but also a life. It presents many facilities for all people. That is to say, a young learner or an adult learner can easily get an appropriate answer to his or her question in their mind about language they try to learn or something they try to sort out. On the other hand, educational blog is one of the types of blog in which you can find information about the language,the structure of language and how to learn or acquire the language input. It depends on the principle of 'i+1',and aims to use the language effectively,which is one of our objectives. When you enter into the blog,you will find any kind of knowledge according to all levels. With your contributions, we are going to develop the content of the blog all together.One of the facilities an educational blog presents is to help the students create something easily. So the student can construct a brigde between the new input and what s/he already knows,and create new ideas, which makes the knowledge permanent for the student. As everboydy who logs in the educational blog has an opportunity to comment on the posted text,to share his or her own opinion and to correct the mistake s/he sees, we can say that providing a personel writing space is one of the best characteristics that an educational blog displays. Furthermore,this promotes critical thinking. After evaluating the posted materials, the persosn can gain new perspectives as a consequence of different pointviews. This aslo means that people can interact with each other on a blog so that they can change their opinions. For the teacher, an educational blog provides a lot of experiences. Both his or her students and his/her colleqiues can see what the teacher misses,and can add something to improve. So an educational blog applicable for information exchange as both sides have a chance to comment.
As an another perspective, you can find what you try to reach among the posted materials according to calendar. You can also reach these in the section of archive. By reaching the resources in the blog, you can give your project a shape. To complete your assingments, you can use the updated input in this blog. At the same tame, you can follow the updated news on other blog
1-what is a blog?
Blog is a shortening of Weblog. A Blog is on online journal, a personal diary. A collaborative space in which you can share with the world.A blog (sometimes referred to as a weblog) is a Web publishing tool that allows authors to quickly and easily self-publish text, artwork, links to other blogs or Web sites, and a whole array of other content.

Blogs are set-up like conventional Web sites, with navigation links, and other standard Web site features. Blogs have one standard characteristic, however: the posting. Blog postings are text entries, similar to a diary or journal, which include a posting date and may include comments by people other than the author, photos, links, or other digital media.

Postings are often short and frequently updated. They appear in reverse chronological order and can include archived entries.

Although blogs have been around for years, they have recently gained in popularity and consequently have received more media coverage.
Blogs work well for students because they can be worked on at virtually any time, in any place with an Internet-enabled computer. Hence, they can be used by computer savvy teachers to create a classroom that extends beyond the boundaries of the school yard.
2-what is the importance of blog

Blogs have been around for over 10 years,and gained the great importance among education and nowadays become more popular among people,blogs are onilne jurunal and their content is traditionally personal,educators do use blogs in order to make learning easy and more beneficial.blogs are extend posibillity of a good and better way to gain and share information with people,that is why blogs as a tool very common among people and become more diserable by schools,teachers and learners,learners and teachers believe that blogs are extend great chance to teach and learn,blogs provides learning through comununication,students can take advantage of their friends and their teachers in any subject,

3- advantages and disadvantages of blog

Advantages of blog
In education communication is a vital skill. Communication is key with the students but with the parents as well. Through creating a blog for yourself and your students you open a new way for your students to communicate with other students. It creates a social interaction between you and your students which helps the students to become comfortable in their learning environment, leading to student success. Studies show that students perform better when they are being student taught. When students use blogs for their writing assignments other students are their audience, this helps students create better writing skills and encourages students to collaborate about these topics. You as the teacher can post websites that are beneficial to their learning or even post games for them to practice certain skills. If a student or parent has a question about the homework they can post it. I you do not respond right away, another parent or another student may be able to answer it for them. It is a great way to communicate with parents and keep them involved in what is going on in the classroom with their child, even if they cannot physically be there. Blogs are search engine friendly and they are easy to maintain. Another advantage of blogs is that many of them are free, which is a concern for many schools .

A-disadvantages
Some of the disadvantages in blogging are that the public is able to look at your blog. This raises concerns for many people, especially for teachers and students in education. However, many of the blog sites now have privacy settings which allow students and teachers the ability to designate who can post, who can view, and even who can comment. Although maintaining a blog can be easy, it is also time consuming to keep up-to-date. You must keep adding new information and posting intriguing information in order to keep your audience (your students) interested. Blogs though they are beneficial for communication they cannot be used for having a conversation, due to the time gap between replies

C-The use of websites and blogs as a tool in education
Weblogs have become very popular recently, as a fast, easy to use way of sharing your thoughts with others on the internet. Weblogs (or blogs) are temporally ordered personal commentaries published on the internet, and cover a wide range of topics from the personal diary through to news sites, political comment, technical and social issues, and gossip . Because of their web-based nature, they encourage external referencing to other internet sites, allowing bloggers (people who blog) to comment on news, others opinions – in fact, on anything that they come across in the wide world of the web. Often, bloggers find other bloggers who share similar views or interests, and highly interlinked communities grow up, sharing information and opinions ., Because blogs are designed to be read, and are referenced by other bloggers who are often regarded as colleagues or friends, they encourage frequent, often daily, postings. The engagement that many users have with their blogs has not gone unnoticed by educationalists [11, 15], who have seen them as a potential way to engage students more fully with the topic. They appear to have potential as tools for supporting student sharing of information, for engaging them with the subject by using cool new technology and relating their work to the outside world, and, by the very nature of the blogging activity, supporting reflective practice, blogs encourage regular postings, which forces bloggers to think about what it is they are to write about. A website is a place on the Internet where you can find information about something, especially a particular organization .This definition is a plain explanation of what is already perceived and known by anyone. We would like to expand the understanding by adding that websites are digital spaces that can be employed for any particular purpose such as education, business, personal interest(s), etc. where not only information can be found but people can interact with one another synchronously (chat rooms), play games (online game rooms), buy goods by using their credit cards, make flight, holiday or hotel reservations, etc. In our specific case, the focus is on educational websites that concentrate on English as a foreign language (EFL). So, what learners can do in EFL websites is improving their vocabulary and grammar by doing online exercises, taking tests, practicing writing, reading, and listening skills through tasks that are designed by professionals and teachers, getting acquainted with other EFL learners with whom they can practice speaking by the help of Skype, for instance. To sum, both blogs and websites are digital spaces that are very promising and serve a great assistance for FL learning and practice. Nevertheless, these two platforms have some advantages and disadvantages over each other. Firstly, we should mention that websites are usually more all around and improved places that provide a more multidimensional assistance and content for FL learners. On the other hand, however, blogs are more flexible and lighter places which allow for easier contribution from the users or learners. Websites are usually set up in such a way that it is possible to upload any kind of file or embed some sources of FL learning and teaching materials that will address all language areas and skills, while weblogs are designed more appropriately for writing and some other sources with less capacity. A blog is more or less like a web page even it can have multiple pages but a website is a combination of multiple sections which might contain multiple pages. And, many FL websites have blog pages, indeed. It is possible to state that weblogs are somehow more informal in nature compared to websites.