Blogs and Wikis

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Blogs and Wikis

• Tim Bornholtz

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Purpose

• Many new technologies are available on the
  internet that enable people to publish and edit
  content without expensive tools or extreme
  technical knowledge
• Try to give an understanding of what they are and
  how they can be used in your organization

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Digital Natives

• Our students have changed radically. Todays
  students are no longer the people our educational
  system was designed to teach
• Our students today are all native speakers of
  the digital language of computers, video games
  and the Internet- Prensky, 2001
• Students today think of digital resources as we
  would think of a book or telephone or television
• Vital tools for getting information

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The Rest of Us

• That leaves the rest of us as Digital
  Immigrants
• We speak an outdated language (that of the
  pre-digital age) and are struggling to teach a
  population that speaks an entirely new language.
• Why do we dial a number? There is no dial on a
  telephone
• Who among us prints documents to edit them
• We bring someone to our computer to show them a
  website instead of sending them the URL

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Web 1.0

• Static pages
• Needed a full-time webmaster to handle content
  changes
• Dynamic pages were still read only
• Needed a programmer to make any changes to
  dynamic pages
• 1989 - 2005

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Web 2.0

• People can create their own content.
• Transformative tools
• Allowing anyone to do at home what used to
  require professionals with expensive equipment.
• Convergence of media Web, audio, video and more
• Social Media sites allow people to share
  opinions, experiences, and perspectives

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• Blogs wikis and podcasts (oh my)?

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Blog

• Web journal or online diary
• Usually written by one person or a small group of
  people
• Most blogs provide commentary or news on one
  topic
• Articles usually link to other blogs or news
  items
• Readers are able to leave comments
• Some blogs integrate photos or video in addition
  to text articles

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Blogs in Higher Ed

• Opening up classroom walls
• Showing the wider world what is happening
• Other students in class
• Parents
• Students in other classes
• Anyone with an internet connection
• Links to relevant articles
• Provide a wider audience for students

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Wikis

• Site that can be written to by many of people
• Content is the priority, not design
• Built in revision control
• Why use a wiki
• online classroom pages that can be changed easily
• Put student's work on the web
• Examples
• Wikiville students collaborate with topics of
  interest
• Wikipedia online encyclopedia

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Uses of Wikis

• Classroom discussion
• List assignments
• Discuss curriculum
• Create a community around a specific topic
• Community can pool their knowledge
• Developer tool
• Software documentation
• Maintain enhancement list
• Track issues

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Advantages of a Wiki

• Good for writing down quick ideas
• Instantly collaborative without emailing
  documents
• Accessible from anywhere with a browser
• Every page revision is kept
• Immediate and empowering everyone has a say

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Disadvantages of a Wiki

• People can see your half-formed, unsure, or
  speculative ideas
• Tendency for entries to be messy without
  deliberate maintenance
• If it is public you may be a target for spam
• Need to be reasonably technical to use the
  wiki-specific markup
• Difficult to enforce content standards and styles

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RSS Feeds

• XML file for serving frequentlyupdated content
• Content publishers syndicatea feed
• Users subscribe to the feed
• Feed Readers periodically check the syndicated
  feed for updates

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Podcasts

• A podcast is a media file, audio or video,
  delivered over the internet using syndicated
  feeds
• Made popular by Apple with iTunes
• Can be played back on portable media players or
  computers
• Can also be integrated with text or PDFs for a
  richer experience

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Podcasts in Higher Ed

• Help students to connect to others
• Provide many different resources for listening
• Take a lesson with you and replay it as many
  times as you'd like

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Podcasts in Higher Ed (cont)?

• Teachers are starting to create lessons as
  podcasts
• Starting to incorporate student podcasts into the
  lessons.
• Students will take greater care in their work
  when there is an audience
• Get in contact with like-minded teachers who are
  also providing podcasts

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Video

• YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video
• Anyone with a camera can create, edit, and upload
  videos
• Videos on many subjects available
• Students can produce and upload their own content
• Able to easily integrate videos into blog postings

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Web 3.0 (end of presentation)?

• Virtual worlds such as Second Life
• The people who live therecreate most
  everything in the environment

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Second Life

• Many schools are using Second Life as an
  environment for e-learning
• Creating online tools for learning within the
  virtual world
• Holding classes for distance learning
• Second Life allows students to experiment with
  architectural design, to study monetary policy,
  and to do sociology research -- to name just a
  few educational uses -- in an enclosed,
  relatively risk-free environment - Chronicle of
  Higher Education 8/30/2006

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Questions?

• Tim Bornholtz
• tim_at_bornholtz.com
• [phone]
• References
• Graham Stanleyhttp//blog-efl.blogspot.com/2006/1
  1/blogs-wikis-podcasts-second-life.html
• Marc Prenskyhttp//marcprensky.com
• Chronicle of Higher Educationhttp//chronicle.com
  /daily/2006/08/2006083001t.htm