Blogs and Wikis in Academia

Engaging the World of the “Read/Write” Web

Presented by Bill Warters OTL Faculty FellowWayne State University

Quick Check-ins• Name

• University Affiliation

• Experience as a Blogger or Wiki editor

• Special Interests/Questions related to today’s session?

“Web 2.0” Described...Stephen Downes portrays it as a shift

"from being a medium, in which information is transmitted and consumed, into being a platform, in which content is created, shared, remixed, repurposed, and passed along"

(Downes, 2005 "E-Learning 2.0," ¶4)

Why Does it Matter for Higher Ed?

Digital Natives & Immigrants

Concept map by Michel Cartier

Where are you on this chart?

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David Warlick on Flat Classrooms“Traditional education has been an environment of hills. The teacher could rely on gravity to support the flow of curriculum down to the learners. But as much as we might like to pretend, we (teachers) are no longer on top of the hill. The hill is practically gone.

For the first time in history, children are more comfortable, knowledgeable, and literate than their parents about an innovation central to society. (Tapscot)

In many cases, students communicate more, construct original content more, and more often collaborate virtually with other people, than do their teachers. Those teachers who pretend to stand on higher ground, appear, to many of their students, to be standing on quicksand.”

http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/2006/04/10/flat-classrooms/

The Flattening Classroom

Renovating the Ivory Tower

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Higher Ed

School 1.0

School 2.0

Web 2.0 = More Engaged Learning?

Learning Design Going Forward?

Image by Bebo White

KM is a Key

Competency

New Tools and Processes

Wikis

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Wikis• A Wiki is a website

that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content, usually in a Web browser.

• Wikis use simple formatting rules--Like word processing.

• Wikis are published online.

• “Wiki” means fast in Hawaiian.

• Authors do not always claim ownership of jointly constructed texts.

• Wikis provide a history and anyone can revisit prior versions of text.

Wikis “In Plain English”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

• Wikipedia

• http://en.wikipedia.org

• Wikiversity

• http://en.wikiversity.org

• Wikibooks

• http://en.wikibooks.org

• Guidelines for class projects

• WSU Class book-writing example

A Source of Educational Content

Sample Student Assignment:

1) Look up something in the Wikipedia

2) Do more Research to Prove it is Correct

Wikipedia Contributors

50,000

100,000

150,000

200,000

250,000

300,000

20012002

20032004

20052006

156 1,103 6,00530,817

100,834

276,615

Regular Contributors to Wikipedia (10 or more edits)

How Do EducatorsUse a Wiki?

Some Wiki Activities

• A wiki “fan zine” for you favorite author.

• A virtual tour of your university.

• Collaborative book reviews or author studies.

• A course “encyclopedia” on a special topic.

• A Wikibook created by a class or group

Free Hosted Wiki Tools

• Easy Places for Getting Started:

• Wikispaces

• Pbwiki

• Seedwiki

• Wetpaint

Wiki Matrix Comparison Tool

http://www.wikimatrix.org/

97 Wiki Platforms and Counting

Wiki Editing Syntax

• Wikitext language or wiki markup is a markup language that offers a simplified alternative to HTML and is used to write pages in wiki websites

• Not standardized. Some tools now offer WYSIWYG editors

h1. Top Level Headingh2. Smaller Headingh6. Smallest Heading

!!!Headline1!!Headline2!Headline3

= Headline 1 === Headline 2 ===== Headline 3 ===

Internal Links: CamelCaseLink or ["free link"]

Headlines Format Examples

PBWiki - an Educator Friendly Starting Place

http://xtremeweek.pbwiki.com

Overview of PBwikiInterface and Tools

Wiki Best Practice Ideas• Discuss ThreadMode vs DocumentMode

writing stylesAs per the MeatBall Wiki, DocumentMode (typically unsigned, using authoritative voice) “looks like this:

Foo is preferable to quuz as a metasyntactic variable because it is shorter and uses the F character, which is earlier in the alphabet than Q and thus better. There are heretics who recommend quuz, but as they are obviously zealots, we can safely ignore them.

Rather than this (ThreadMode):

I think foo is better than quuz --SomeBody

Well, you're wrong. Quuz is far superior. I know because I say. --SomebodyElse ”

Wiki Best Practice Ideas• 1. Make use of features that alert a wiki

manager that changes have been made to the wiki. Check regularly to see what changes have been made and by whom. Perhaps assign someone to watch for spam.

• 2. Determine whether your wiki should be accessible to the public or be limited to a defined group. Perhaps start private, and go public when the work is more developed.

• 3. Be aware of copyright and licensing issues when posting other people’s work.

as per “Wiki Wisdom: Lessons for Educators” by Michelle R. Davishttp://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2007/09/12/02wiki.h01.html

Wiki Best Practice Ideas• 4. Emphasize “digital professionalism” to the

community, remind users that it is a document many other people will see. Talk about and make clear what is, and is not, acceptable on the wiki.

• Consider providing a Style Manual . See this example from Bemidji Statehttp://snipurl.com/wikistylemanual

• 5. Especially when using wikis with young students, take steps to prevent users from posting personal information that would reveal their identities.

Try Editing A Page?

http://xtremeweek.pbwiki.com/

Editing Password is “wsu”

Blogs in Academia

Image from http://awd.cl.uh.edu/blog/

Blogs in a Nutshell

A Blog is...• A shortened form of the phrase

“Web Log”

• Like a ship’s log written daily by the captain of a vessel.

• A web site that is easily updated by posting short items.

• Ordered by date and topic, with newest items at the top.

• Often archived for searching and reading later.

Some Typical Blog Features• Comments - now comment spam is

becoming a problem

• Feeds - others can subscribe to your Blog and read it in a newsreader of their choice

• Trackbacks - “pinging” system lets you know when others have commented on your post at their site (use is dropping)

• Categories/Tags - often overlapping

• Site Search

• Permanent Archives - and “permalinks”

• Blogroll listing of other related blogs

Blog Content includes

• News and Journalism

• Education/Pedagogy

• Analysis

• Humor

• Personal Observation and Opinion

• “Annotated Bookmarks”

• and More...

Topical Examples

Politics

Story- telling

Medicine

Local Photos

Topical Examples

Sports

Music

Cooking

Library-related

Blog Growth Report

• 70 million weblogs

• About 120,000 new weblogs each day, or...

• 1.4 new blogs per second

• 3000-7000 new splogs (fake, or spam blogs) created every day

• Peak of 11,000 splogs per day last December

Technorati Report

The State of the Live Web

April 2007

Impressive Blog Growth & Posting Rates

60 Million

2 MillionOct 06Mar 03

Impressive Growth & Posting Rates

Aug 04 Feb 07Nov 05

Demonstration of Adding a Post in a WordPress Blog

Easy to Use!

Wiki Listing of Academic Blogs

http://wiki.henryfarrell.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Some Uses of Blogs by Faculty & Instructors

• Content-related blog posts (often longer) as professional practice

• Networking and personal knowledge sharing among peers

• Research Diary tracking project progress

• Source of Instructional Tips for students

• Course Announcements and Readings

• Annotated links

• Knowledge management (outboard brain)

Blog Research Diary Topics• An initial entry that discusses general research

interests.

• A statement and refinement of the research question.

• A preliminary research strategy.

• Notes on sources.

• Observations.

• Free writing. Discovering the focus of the research.

• Formal writing.

• Presentation.

http://edtech.tennessee.edu/%7Eset31/04_05.htm

Higher Ed Online Conference

http://www.higheredblogcon.com

Topical “Blog Carnivals”

http://blogcarnival.com/bc/

Doctoral Student Blogs

http://www.PHDweblogs.net

WSU Example: Bill’s Library InterOp Project Blog

Blog Use with Students• Reflective or writing journals

• Knowledge management

• Assignment submission and review

• Dialogue in groupwork

• E-portfolios

• Share course-related resources or lecture/unit summaries

Example: WSU Student Directed Study

WSU Example - Mame Jackson’s Service Learning Class

SoTL Project Blogs

WSU Teaching and Learning Bloghttp://cgi.lib.wayne.edu/blog/otl/

Free Blogs for Educators and Students

EduBlogshttp://edublogs.org/

Learnerblogs.org for K-12 studentsEdublogs.org for teachers and trainersUniblogs.org for university studentsEslblogs.org for ESL students

EduBlogs Intro Video

Other Free Blog Hosts

http://mashable.com/2007/08/06/free-blog-hosts/

Blogger.com

Wordpress.com

Good List of 40+ Services

Blogs (and Wikis) are Built into Moodle

Nice Academic Blogging Learning Module

http://edtech.tennessee.edu/~set31/

Reviews Different Uses of Blogs

Managing Your Blog “Reading List”

RSS Explainedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

• RSS Ideas for Educators.pdf

• Quentin D'Souza shares many tools and links via TeachingHacks.com

• See the Web 2.0 Wiki he’s got goinghttp://www.teachinghacks.com/wiki/

RSS for Educators Explained in a PDF

Lots of Examples and Ideas for Use in Teaching

One Day on the WWW...

http://www.teachinghacks.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/rsscomic11a.pdf

Behold The Aggregator!

Behold The Aggregator!

aka RSS Reader

Behold The Aggregator!

Demonstration of Bloglines Aggregator

http://www.bloglines.com

Some Blog Research Tools

• http://technorati.com/widgets (lots of tools)

• Technorati Charts http://technorati.com/chart/[yourtopic]

• http://www.Blogdigger.com

• http://blogsearch.google.com/

• http://www.icerocket.com/

Interested in Learning More?

• Online “Course” on Emerging Technologies for Scholars

• “Blog to Teach, Teach to Blog” Course

• Links to Lots more ideas

http://tools.comm.wayne.edu/moodle/course/category.php?id=5