Blogs & Wikis in Context

Chris Fowler6th December 2010

Content

• What are blogs?• What are Wikis?• Web and Educational Contexts• Putting Blogs & Wikis into context

What are Blogs?

• Personal reflections often chronologically ordered

• A journal or diary• Others read and can comment • People tend to follow blogs

Micro blogging?• Small version of blogs!• Restricted to 140 - 200 characters (ie mainly

text based)• A web service (you subscribe to it – eg Twitter)• Posts (or tweets) can be delivered via SMS,

web browser or email.• People usually select others they want to

‘follow’ (e.g a celebrity)

What are Wikis?

• Collaborative Web site (open editing/writing/saving eg wikispace)

• Can be ‘vandalised’ or ‘abused’• Some have limited editorial rights/control (e.g.

Wikipedia) • Not a finished product – shows work in progress• Dynamic content

Technology and Educational Context

• Educational context:• Instruction : teacher –centric; product-centric; one-to-

many; limited interaction• Construction: Learner-centric; process -centric;

individual activity; high interactivity.• Social Construction: learner-centric; process-centric;

many-to-many; communication

Technology and Educational Context

• Technology (Web) Context:• Web 1.0: static pages; content driven; controlled;

individual focused; limited interactivity; limited communication tools (email).• Web 2.0: dynamic; process driven; democratic; people

focused; high interactivity; multitude of communication tools.• Web 3.0 : all of the above plus personalised (computer

agents/personal assistants etc).

Putting it into ContextINSTRUCTION CONSTRUCTION SOCIAL

CONSTRUCTION

WEB 1.0 HTMLSearch EnginesFile upload/download

VRML EmailIM

WEB 2.0 Del.icio.usFlickrPodcastingInternet TV/Radio (streaming)

BlogsMicro blogsWeb Apps

Tag cloudsConferencingWikisGoogle.doc

WEB 3.0(Semantic Web)

Personal Assts (computer agents)

3D Wharehouses Friend of a friend (Foaf)

Thank you for Listening