1 / 20

Blogs and Wikis

Blogs and Wikis. Dr. Norm Friesen. Questions. What is a blog? What is a Wiki? What is Wikipedia? What is RSS?. Terminology: Blog. Blog: A website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.

kacy
Download Presentation

Blogs and Wikis

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Blogs and Wikis Dr. Norm Friesen

  2. Questions • What is a blog? • What is a Wiki? • What is Wikipedia? • What is RSS?

  3. Terminology: Blog • Blog: • A website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. • Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries • Wikipedia

  4. Terminology: Wiki • Wiki: is a type of Web site that allows the visitors to easily: add, remove, and otherwise edit and change some available content, sometimes without the need for registration. • This ease of interaction and operation (along with change-tracking abilities) makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring. • Wikipedia

  5. Terminology: Wikipedia • Wikipedia (from the words wiki and encyclopedia):a multilingual, Web-based free content encyclopedia project • Written collaboratively by volunteers • Currently Wikipedia has more than five million articles in many languages, including more than 1.5 million in the English-language version

  6. Terminology: RSS • RSS: a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated pages, such as blogs or news feeds. • Consumers of RSS content use special browsers (aggregators) to watch for new content in dozens or even hundreds of web feeds. • E.g: mail.google.com

  7. Terminology: Blogosphere • Blogosphere is the collective term encompassing all blogs as a community or social network. Many weblogs are densely inter-connected; bloggers read others' blogs, link to them, reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each others' blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture. (e.g. http://technorati.com)

  8. Blogs: educational uses generally (Brighouse 2004) • Standard Class Webpage(s): • Address recurring questions/issues • Interesting developments that relate to the theme of the course (via instructor) • Current events, Web sites mentioned, etc. • Organization of in-class discussion • Blogging has distinct advantages over more common threaded discussion in its support of style, ownership and identity • Inefficiencies in threading and linking (Cameron & Anderson)

  9. General educational uses (Brighouse 2004) • Group Blogs: students create (and present?) a group project using a blog • Requiring students to write their own blogs as part of their grade • In conjunction with an assignment; e.g. an article review

  10. Wikis: General Educational Uses(Science of Spectroscopy) • Easily create simple websites(eliminates technical obstacles to putting things online) • Project development with peer review(e.g. write a report/paper gradually, with feedback from instructor/students before final draft) • Group Authoring (i.e. online group work) Using a wiki “pulls” the group members together to build and edit the document on a wiki page. It also allows all group members immediate, equal access to the most recent version of the document. (Tracking collaborative work using multiple wiki

  11. Wikis: General Educational Uses(Science of Spectroscopy) • Data Collection Because of its ease of editing, a wiki can be very useful for collecting data from a group of students. The wiki best suited for this right now is JotSpot, which has a data collection tool you can install with just a few clicks. • Review classes & teachersStudents at Brown University started CAW - Course Advisor Wiki, a place for students to collaboratively write reviews of courses they've taken. • PresentationsSome people are using a wiki in place of conventional presentation software, like Keynote and PowerPoint.

  12. The Blog Assignment Read topic introduction on my blog Submit article by e-mail for approval Find an article Submit review by e-mail and post to blog Write a review Read reviews on two other blogs. Post comments and a question Respond to comments and questions

  13. Assignment 1 (1 of 4) • Participation Required in class and for the blog assignment • Write up a summary of the contents of one of the recommended readings: 1.5 to 2 single-spaced pages. • Post draft to a Blog: 27.6 • Comment on others’ proposals: 29.6 • Submit final version soon afterwards: (03.07)

  14. Assignment 1 (2 of 4) • Your review should give a brief overview of the article's contents, • Your review should contextualize and articulate a response to the article • You can contextualize the article reviewed in terms of what you have learned thus far in the course • Your response to the article can be critical or positive, or can suggest further areas for research: but whatever your response, please back it up or support it.

  15. Assignment 1 (3 of 4) • This support can take the form of evidence from your own experience or from a quality source. This evidence can also take the form of the kind of study you are proposing for the second assignment. • Post your review to your blog, and send a copy (in Word or HTML or plain text) to norm.friesen@gmail.com

  16. Assignment 1 (4 of 4) • Read others' reviews, and comment on them (at least two others reviews/comments). • Your postings can ask questions about the project that might be raised for you, or can draw connections between projects that you have learned about. • Respond to any comments or questions that you receive on your review or blog.

  17. Some student blogs • http://testedontrees.blogspot.com • http://earthboundbeing.blogspot.com • http://amandasdendro.blogspot.com • http://karlena19.blogspot.com

  18. Primary Outcomes • Students learn course material both individually and collaboratively • Learning from peers is enhanced through blog visits • Students improve writing skills • Students write for a “public” audience • Students learn the potential uses of blogs and how to manage them

  19. Secondary Beneficial Outcomes • More teacher-student contact through e-mail • Teacher learns from the students • Forum for peer social interaction • Students express their individuality and values • Affords shy students the opportunity to find their ‘voice’

  20. Sources • The street finds its own use for things (Harry Brighouse, 2004) http://crookedtimber.org/2003/09/15/the-street-finds-its-own-use-for-things • Comparing Weblogs to Threaded Discussion Tools in Online Educational Contexts http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Nov_06/article01.htm • Using wiki in educationhttp://www.scienceofspectroscopy.info/edit/index.php?title=Using_wiki_in_education

More Related