The advantages in creating blogs for teaching English in virtual environments

A BRIEF HISTOTY OF BLOGGER

On August 23, 1999, Blogger was launched by Pyra Labs. As one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools, it is credited for helping popularize the format. In February 2003, Pyra Labs was acquired by Google under undisclosed terms. The acquisition allowed premium features (for which Pyra had charged) to become free. In October 2004, Pyra Labs' co-founder, Evan Williams, left Google. In 2004, Google purchased Picasa; it integrated Picasa and its photo sharing utility Hellointo Blogger, allowing users to post photos to their blogs.

On May 9, 2004, Blogger introduced a major redesign, adding features such as web standards-compliant templates, individual archive pages for posts, comments, and posting by email. On August 14, 2006, Blogger launched its latest version in beta, codenamed "Invader", alongside the gold release. This migrated users to Google servers and had some new features, including interface language in French, Italian, German and Spanish.[9] In December 2006, this new version of Blogger was taken out of beta. By May 2007, Blogger had completely moved over to Google-operated servers. Blogger was ranked 16 on the list of top 50 domains in terms of number of unique visitors in 2007.[10]

On February 24, 2015, Blogger announced that as of late March it will no longer allow its users to post sexually explicit content, unless the nudity offers "substantial public benefit," for example in "artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts."[11] On February 28, 2015, accounting for severe backlash from long-term bloggers, Blogger reversed its decision on banning sexual content, going back to the previous policy that allowed explicit images and videos if the blog was marked as "adult".[12] (Taken from wikipedia).

ITS ADVANTAGES FOR TEACHING ENGLISH

Blogger is a useful web 2.0 nowadays because it helps to share information in many different ways. Its benefits are many, for example it can be used to publish any kind of written content so others can read it. In the case of teaching English we can use it as a platform to look for reading material or as a way to teach different kinds of topics of the English language. For instance we can explain the tenses and their uses or different vocabulary.

The importance of this tool is because of its easy access since we only need the link to get in and if the topics are well organized its understanding would be perfect. This It tool is also useful because it not only allows us to share written information but we can also link images or videos from other platforms such as you tube or powtoon.