Cyberspace musings en français

A class of third-year UVic French students has been busy filling a corner of cyberspace with their own musings for marks. Under the direction and encouragement of UVic assistant professor of applied linguistics Dr. Catherine Caws, these students are mastering various Internet technologies and improving their writing skills while maintaining quite a lot of blog banter-all in the interest of getting a good mark in class and learning as much as possible about writing and editing on the Internet.

Instead of following the traditional format of lectures and delivering papers in finished form, the students are plastering their writings on the Internet for any cyber-surfing reader to enjoy. Their efforts have already sparked the interest of a major French-language magazine.

The French-Canadian magazine L'actualit&e#180; (www.lactualite.com)-the equivalent of Maclean's Magazine in Quebec-has recognized the worth of the new online learning environment being fostered by Caws and has agreed to publish the results of the students' first paper on the magazine's website in April.

For the French 302B coursework overseen by Caws with assistance from sessional instructor and UVic alumna Annye Castonguay, the students manipulate various technologies-wikis, blogs and Moodle-for regular writing assignments including argumentative essays and translations from English into French. (According to Wikipedia, itself a wiki, "A wiki is software that allows users to collaboratively create, edit, link, and organize the content of a website, usually for reference material." Moodle is a free software platform that allows for easy creation of online courses and other e-learning tools.)

The students manage their own blogs, comment on each other's, learn to edit their own writing and that of their peers.

"The advantage of doing so on a wiki is that students have access to their text whenever they want and from wherever they want as long as they have access to the Internet," says Caws. "In addition, the wiki allows the instructor to access all the drafts that the students have worked on and thus follow the editing process."

The students' writing is available on their wiki (http://302bs02.pbwiki.com/) and offers an array of topics, including one recent entry entitled "Facebook en français, s'il-vous-pla&i#710;t!" Bien s&u#710;r, the text is in French.

This is the first year using the blogs and wiki for the French 302B course.