Blogs vs. Wikis
I think both blogs and wikis can play a part in the connected classroom. Blogs can be used as journal activities whereby I could ask a question and have students respond. Each student would have his or her own comment posted as a response.
A wiki, on the other hand, will be useful for collaboration. Students can add to or change things written by each other. In one sense, I don’t like that, because I can see where some students might “take over” and delete writings by another, but I can always go to the history to see the changes. Some ground rules would have to be established first, I’m sure. But I like the idea of using it as a continuing story. I had thought about doing this in my classroom with a Word document saved on the server so each child would have access to it, but this would be much simpler. If the students just add on to a sentence or paragraph, they will not be taking away from anyone else. I think as they start using a wiki, they need to allow others to put down their thoughts, no matter what. I will be using this with 2nd thru 4th grade, and I know how some of them have little or no tolerance for some of their classmates. Again, ground rules. I’ll have to work on that!
One note: in a class on wikis at the AETC this summer, the instructor told us that when we embed files in our pages, if we have a lot to put on there (as I did), link to the file instead of embedding it. It will make the page easier to upload, especially if your reader has dial-up. I spent a couple days this summer redoing my pages for that. Lesson learned. It does go much faster now.
Also, another beauty of the wiki, is that you can have multiple pages for collaboration. I will create one for each class. And each of them can be added to. It seems that on the blogs, only the home page is for commenting and the other pages are static. You can create static pages on a wiki just by locking it, but you don’t have to.
Wikispaces has a free wiki without ads for teachers. http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers You can actually create as many wikis as you need. On the advice of my instructor this summer, I created one for each grade I’ll be working with (because of the number of files I’ll be uploading to it), and each one is free. I will eventually link to all of them from my main wiki. I believe I’ve seen other teachers using their wikis the same way. In fact, I’ve seen blogs from other teachers who have a personal blog and a professional blog. I’ve seen some things on the personal blogs that I wouldn’t want my parents reading, so I sort of question that. I’m always afraid something will come back to bite me in the rear!
July 18th, 2008 at 8:32 am
You have really been working on this assignment. I would like to have a Wiki to collaborate with other teachers since I am retired. I would like to help them out by making Virtual Field Trips or Bulletin Board Ideas, etc. Do you think this would work? I’m still green on how much of this stuff works, but I have a lot of time on my hands to work things out. Let me know what you think?
July 18th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
I totally agree that it can be a bit overwhelming and I sometimes find myself spending entirely too much time on a computer. But…. that’s how we learn, isn’t it? And when we stop learning – it’s time to go to the house.
July 20th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
I do believe there’s a place for both wikis and blogs in the classroom — it is just a matter of finding the place for each. I will definitely look into the free wikis and it’s good to know that we can get a free one for each class. I also like the idea of the continuing story — even for my 9th graders, I can see that as a fun project. I am contemplating a way to work that into my class. Thanks for the ideas.
July 24th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Thanks for your comments on blogs and wikis.