Didactic experiences with blogs in training teachers: writing in digital media to develop professional competencies

This paper focused on three experiences with students from a teacher training programme and these included:

• A children’s literature blog with 55 students who posted reviews of children’s books on this
• The electronic journal with 139 students who produced a collective online journal about several subjects from their programme
• An electronic portfolio produced for their programme with 101 students.

The students appeared to have developed their generic skills in ICT, information management, analysis and synthesis, decision-making, written communication and interpersonal communication from the project. Students’ opinion was that this was interesting and they had enjoyed this. The teachers felt the students were learning more and were more motivated, they had been more able to organise their own work and had been more innovative and creative. The disadvantages of the project were in terms of time to undertake and there had been some instances of the use of inappropriate source material. The advantages were the visibility of the students’ work, the versatility and ease of use, the motivation of the students, the development of their writing skills and commitment to collaborate.