Blogs vs. Wiki
How do blogs and wikis differ? Talk about a situation where you might choose to use a blog instead of a wiki or a wiki over a blog.
Class Topics/Assignments at a Glance
Day 1: Web 2.0 - The Read/Write Web
Assignment due today: Richardson p. 17-58, Blog Topic
At home: Choose journal article for Friday discussion/paper
*Post to this blog!
Day 2: Wikis and Social Bookmarks
Assignment due today: Richardson p. 59-74, 89-100.
At-home: edit class wiki.
*Post to this blog!
Day 3: Flickr and Podcasting: Broadcast Yourself
Assignment due today: Richardson p. 101-124,
*Post to this blog!
Day 4: RSS Feeds & Review of Web 2.0 Technologies, Bringing it all together.
Assignment due today: Richardson p. 75-87, 125-138
At-home: Complete 2-page article summary
*Post to this blog!
Day 5: Presentations
Assignment due today: Article Summary, Individual/Group Presentations/Evaluation
*Invite instructors to view your blog.
Final work is due electronically/online one week from the end of the course.
12 comments:
Blogs and wikis differ in their tone and interactions. Blogs are more opinion and a more casual, conversational tone. Wikis are more fact based, and instead of a conversation, the content is changed.
I think a wiki would be useful in a classroom literature circle or research project where I want students to think critically and collaborate.
The most concrete difference to me is that wikis are intended to share information/facts not opinions. However several wikis included discussions options that felt like a blog. In my opinion, I would use a wiki when I wanted the purpose to be more collaborative allowing everyone the opportunity to edit and contribute to the information in a quick and concise manner. It seems like a wiki allows for collaboration to be more reliable and efficient because everyone sees the same thing at the same time, rather than trying to communicate through email and getting a complicated trail of material. At this point I plan to use a wiki to create a vocabulary page for our science unit that students and myself can add to as we complete experiments and clarify meanings. I would not use a blog to share vocabulary because it wouldn’t involve opinions.
Also, I might use a blog instead of a wiki if I wanted more insight into how students are thinking about a new concept in order to get a quick idea of what additional teaching is needed.
Blogs appear to allow students to post their thoughts on a particular idea or issue through a conversation format. Wikis seems to provide students an opportunity to be creative and collaborate on a particular project/activity. I plan to use a blog when I want my students to discussion ideas such as analyzing a poem and explain what it means to them. I plan to use a wiki when I want the students to be creative and collaborate on a particular project such as a never-ending story or even creating a list of content vocabulary words. I am excited and really look forward to using both formats in the future.
Blogs seem to be more of a chain of comments similar to when you have an email with replies back and forth, whereas the wiki can be edited so that it appears as one document even though it could have been created by many people. As a tool for collabortively researching a topic with fellow teachers in my department or sharing usable information, I can see the value of a wiki and as I become more familiar with it, hope I can make it easy for the 4 of us in the elementary music department to be able to use wikis. I agree with the comments so far that it seems as though the blog would be used more for finding out how students valued an activity.
A wiki is a collaborative creation of content whereas a blog is opinion, a discussion that may be supported by fact.
As I look at various wikis, I see the wiki replacing a webpage. The wiki has content like the webpage with the advantage of the collection of knowledge that comes from the collaboration.
I plan to use a wiki for my Library Home Page and have students add book reviews/summaries to benefit the entire student body as an option to an oral book report. A blog would be more appropriate if several students were reading/discussing the same book.
Wikis are fact-based whereas blogs share opinions. From the examples viewed in class, blogs have a more conversational tone.
Working on the wiki (that sounds like a good name for a song) today seemed a bit easier. I'm not sure if it was because we did the blog yesterday and the wiki was similar or if it was because I could see more possibilities with the wiki. Either one would be difficult for me to work with students because of limited computer access. However, I am going to try to use a wiki to collaborate with other counselors in the district.
A blog is more of a conversation where the writers are expressing their opinion about a topic while a wiki is a collaboration of writers to produce a product that can be continually changing. I see the blog as a good place for students to discuss their ideas and get feedback from their peers.
The wiki on the other hand, teaches students to recognize that more and more of our knowledge is based on the collabotaive efforts of many individuals.
I can see using wikis with my students to work on group projects where they can put their information onto the wiki and the other students in their group can edit it. They can each work at their own computers and come up with the final project without using alot of class time to collaborate. The fact that I can go back and look at the history to see which students did the entries will allow me to see what the individual has contributed to the project.
From what I have learned today, I think that wikis and blogs differ in their purposes, but they both are sources of information. I would use a wiki to begin an on-line book club (upper elem.). Among many things in this wiki students could share and create lists of favorite books (fiction, non-fiction...). With this book list on a blog there could be a discussion about which book/books the group would like to read. This may not be the most efficient method, but illustrates the conversational nature of a blog v.s. the information/fact sharing of a wiki.
I could also use a wiki as a KWL study tool--which kids could add to as a unit progressed.
Two differences I've noticed are, first, a blog is more linear, with the blogger establising content to be reacted to, while a wiki is more akin to a forum where ownership of or responsibility for the content is shared by the group. Second, a wiki is more accepting of uploads and downloads of files, which reflects a shared ownership.
Tonight I have the opportunity to be one of the last ones to post my feeling on wiki verses blog. What I like about a wiki is that more participation from the learner is possible, and more input into the voice of the whole wiki. I also like how the final project is a collaborative effort, with everyone working toward a “finished project”.
The blog on the other hand is easy for me to read, it doesn’t take so much navigation and the product is more “two-toned”.
I feel that I might use a wiki when making a paper for a class project, something like a newspaper from 1776. A wiki would allow the students to create and a more collaborative product would appear. I personally am having more trouble making the wiki function like I want.
The blog would be great for a contemporary class newspaper, a book talk, or even weighing in on personal opinions about a topic covered in class.
The blog is a conversation among a number of people. Each contributes their opinions and their individual voice is evident. A wiki is a product to which many people contribute. The goal is fact and individual voices should not be so evident. I'm trying to set up a wiki in which the fourth graders prep for their symphony trip by preparing "program notes" about the composers and the pieces we will hear. With three or four students collaborating on each composer's page, this seems like an efficient way to turn out a small research project. What concerns me are the access problems that people talked about today in class. A lot of what was said went over my head, but the fact that so many people voiced concerns gives me pause. Is a wiki going to create unintended consequences?
Post a Comment