Tutor Blog and Facebook group for learning English language

Find out the advantages and the disadvantages of using tutor blog and facebook group for teaching English language to a group of class 8 students in Bangladeshi context. 

In this technologically advanced age, education is not only confined in classroom. The internet has revolutionized many aspects of modern life, and the education sector is no exemption. Teachers and students both find many other alternatives of classroom to learn language. Facebook and blog are two of them. In Bangladesh, facebook and blog are quite familiar among the students who are already acquainted with the enough source of internet. But it is also limited within some schools and within some children who belong from an educated and affluent family because learning outside the class over internet is quite expensive for class 8 students. Nevertheless, tutor blog and facebook group are very much helpful in learning English language.

Blog: A blog is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete and very much informal in writing. There are three ways of using blogs. These are: tutor blog, learner blog and class blog.

Tutor blog is created and monitored by the teacher. Teacher checks and monitors the student’s activity on blog. It has become a good source of education outside of the class. Let’s find out some advantaged and disadvantages of tutor blog for Bangladeshi language learners.

Advantages of tutor blog:

• Blog helps students to improve their communication skills, English writing skills, knowledge and vocabulary.
• Blog build confidence, self expression and autonomous learning. Even the shyest students find a voice.
• Blogging helps students to share his/her own thought of learning.
• Online tools allow students to engage with other students and instructor instantly. This gives students the chance to discuss question as they arise.
• Blogging increases the development of critical thinking skills.
• A blog is a portal for creativity and personal initiative, as it is easy to incorporate with image videos, audios and others creative items into written words.
• Blog makes learning less formal and tries to remove the idiocy of students.

Disadvantages of tutor blog:

• Lack of IT skill can hamper the teaching and learning process. Inexperienced tutor and learners who have lack of IT skills may find it challenging to use the interactive facilities available via the virtual classroom.
• Students can be obstructed from the running programs on computer. They may find it difficult to concentrate if they are interrupted by notifications from e-mail, social media accounts etc.
• Online tutor from blog cannot provide the physical gestures required to enable the learners to make progress in certain subjects. In physical education, tutor may need to show face-to-face, how to carry out a certain technique.
• A lack of good internet connection can disconnect from tutor website. Students may feel disturbance from this and lose the interest in tutor blog.
• Graphical explanation can be difficult in learning through tutor blog, it is more time consuming.
• Sometimes students and teachers do not like talking to people whom they cannot see, even it is on the computer screen.

Facebook group: Facebook is a very important platform on social media. Its popularity is increasing day by day all over the world. People generally use it to get connect with family and friends, keep updated with current world, to share pictures and incidents with others. But facebook is also used as educational purposes. Students with same aim open facebook group to get connected with all the members. Teacher makes the admin himself or chooses one from the students who posts important information regarding class or lesson. 

Advantages of facebook group:

• Facebook group helps to find right the students with similar interest.
• Facebook group keeps everyone in a loop to get informative information in one click.
• Group members can interact directly with anyone at any place, who may have questions.
• Members can share any necessary documents from internet and can post it in the group to share with everyone.
• As facebook is quite handy, students can check the group regularly seeing the notification instantly.
• Students can also have group chat, tagging, sharing related pictures and videos with the group members.

Disadvantages of facebook group:

• The young students are more interested in socializing with friends in facebook rather than searching for educational purpose.
• Students are more likely to join groups that are affect their personal or social life rather than created for educational purpose. They show less loyalty on the group.
• In Bangladesh, the users of facebook from class 8 would be very poor and whoever are using, are not that much well aware to find out the educational elements from facebook group.