This week we learned about what a powerful tool for collaboration wikis provide. In many ways, I see blogs and wikis as similar, and even interchangeable. I think it just depends on what you want your students to do: merely comment on the content or actively build, add to, change and actually interact with the content.
My classmates and I have reflected over the last few weeks on the ways blogs can be used in our classrooms. We've come up with ideas as journaling, responding to prompts, and showing different ways of solving the same math problem. I think that wikis can be used for these same activities. The one thing that makes wikis unique is that they allow for an active participation in the creating and forming of the content. Students not only state their ideas, they edit the ideas of others, they remove things they see as unnecessary.
One final reflection, if wikis have been around since '94, why when I type the word is it underlined in red??? Granted, I only recently learned about wikis, but the word hasn't even made it ino the dictionary yet???
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From professional reflections to everyday musings
About Me
- Matt
- I don't even know where to start in describing myself. Christianity has played a big part in shaping who I am today, although I have not felt spiritually moved and fed in some time...I'm working on that. I'm a firm believer in the mantra "You reap what you sew." A real, "Do unto others..." kinda guy. I love to laugh and make others laugh. My biggest pet peeves are liars and cheats. I love to read, although I rarely have the time. I love going to movies. My dream is to write someday...although what, I don't yet know. Hence this blog. I hope to discover my voice and my passion.
4 comments:
I think there is one major difference between blogs and wikis. Blog entries are individually entered and are identified by individuals. One cannot change someone else's entry, although one may comment on someone else's entry. As for wikis, one has the power to change someone else's entry and to modify someone else's ideas. They can go back and forth until the final product will represent the ideas of many participants. In a classroom setting, we can set up some common themes for all to work on. The final product will represent the thoughts and works of all. The trick is how to grade each individual student. I think there must be some guidelines to do that.
Hmm, I never noticed that Firefox's spell checker doesn't recognize wiki. It recognizes blogs and podcasts. That's a great observation!
What I see as the main difference between blogs and wikis is that blogs are time stamped, where the newest posts are always at the top and can be subscribed to through rss. (RSS isn't recognized by the spell checker either.) Blogs are more for conversation. Wikis allow for collaboration, but not really a conversation. Also, the only rss feed is for changes made to a page, not for new posts.
Having read the same articles that you read, I DO see different uses for blogs and WIKIs. I believe WIKIs should primarily be used for collaborative efforts, while blogs can be use for just about everything.
I also wonder why some words that are in common use today don't appear in the dictionaries used by most of the programs we use. One thought I had - if Bill Gates didn't invent it, does he not recognize it as a word?!?!?
I find that wiki is a great source for your class. I have a good friend who took over the journalism class and I introduce him to this program and he was pretty pleased. By the way I like visiting your blog. I love that clip-art.
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