introduction to wikis and blogs in education
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
A weblog, or “blog”, is a dynamic writing and publishing tool that allows for creation, editing, commenting on, and publishing of text, images, and multimedia on the Internet.
According to another definition, a weblog “is a web site that contains brief, discrete pieces of information called posts that are arranged in reverse chronological order. A weblog can contain a wide variety of content including written essays, annotated links, documents, graphics, and multimedia.”
As personal journals. To deliver news. For reflection, invention, revision of
writing. For communication between members of
an organization.
As community builders As spaces for publication of student
projects As spaces for creation of linked and
multimedia texts As personal, learning, and reading journals As tools for invention, revision, and peer
response
The evolving nature of all web texts, including weblogs: information on the web changes quickly.
Balance between assigning formal and informal writing on student weblogs
Getting students motivated to post
Ask students to keep personal or contribute to class weblogs
Maintain balance between formality and exploration
Make sure students comment on each other’s posts
Make sure students link to each other’s posts and other sites when posting
www.blogger.com www.livejournal.com www.wordpress.com www.bloggercrab.com
Wiki bus at the Honolulu Airport
A wiki is a collaborative writing environment whose members work together on the creation of co-authored texts through joint invention, revision, and editing.
Here is a slightly more “technical” definition of wikis:
Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly.
writing in a wiki changes things...
traditional “authority” is supplemented by “collective wisdom”
collaboration supersedes individual authorship
the whole community of readers and writers assume responsibility for the quality of a text
wikis for learning and teaching
Understand the collaborative nature of wiki projects and help students to understand it, too.
Provide detailed instructions and explanations of standards to students.
Resist the urge to go in and change student text, even if something is incorrect
Instead, encourage revision and rethinking
onward, to examples of wiki-based writing projects
Images used in this presentation are from Flickr, unless otherwise indicated.a pdf file with this presentation is available at www.pz-writing.net