Alexander Ganz’s recently published article “Mircopublishing as a Tool for Collaboration and Socialization” in Fremdsprachen und Hochschule (Germany) offers insight on various micropublishing tools – blogs, boards, wikis, etc. – and their use in a foreign language classroom environment. Ganz demonstrates how these tools allow students to write for a new and wider audience, one which is able to interact with the student-author. This new audience admits the student to a new community and thus makes available new types of socialization, motivation, group identity and also fosters digital literacy. The article cites benefits of micropublishing not only from engaging with an outside audience, but from within the classroom as well: while these publications may be written by individual students, they may also be done in groups or as a class, allowing for face-to-face interaction, collaboration and problem-solving in addition to the creative component of writing to engage an audience. Additionally, these writing outlets have also been shown to alter teacher feedback and create a more dialogic and collaborative form of knowledge transfer, thus giving students a stronger sense of ownership over their work. Potential drawbacks to using web-based publishing are also addressed in the article e.g. the need for clear and well-planned design in assignment and assessment, but with proper planning the article demonstrates how the use of these tools can transform conventional classroom interaction into online tasks that encourage communication and socialization all while facilitating the traditional learning process.
Alexander Ganz is a Ph.D. candidate in the German Studies Dept. at the University of Arizona. He received his B.A. in American Studies and Communication/Media from the Universität Leipzig and his M.A. in German Literature from the University of Arkansas. His research interests include pop-culture in the foreign language classroom, new media literacy and assessment, multiple literacies, and language pedagogy.
The article can be found on the right for download.