Blog vs. Wiki

Since last January, I've been using a blog for my classes at Red Rocks Community College. I post what we've done in class, so the students don't have to try to get in touch with me if they miss class or forget. I also have links for each class.

It finally occurred to me this week that a wiki might suit my needs better, so I've started one at PBwiki, though I don't have anything in it yet.

I guess it seemed logical to use a blog because I was making regular chronological posts about the classes. However, the students aren't commenting on the posts--at least no one has to date--so I don't really need that feature. Another problem with the blog is that during times when I'm not teaching a particular I can't save the related links in the sidebar except by leaving that element on the page. In the wiki, I can just hide (or not link to) a page I don't need during a semester, but the content is still there. With the wiki, I can also embed a widget from Box.net for the folder with the files for the class rather than just linking to the page.

Renaissance Woman Wiki

I've been working on a wiki with information on writing and research--at least for starters--for my students. I also promised Desideria Stockton that I'd provide information on research for her Collaboration Station in Second Life. So far I've got the first of four sections done. The third section, on actually doing research, will be by far the most involved.

Sloan-C Workshop

From June 20 through yesterday, June 29, I've been participating in an online workshop offered by the Sloan Consortium titled "Learning Online 2.0: Engaging, Interacting and Syndicating Applications." I was actually surprised at how much I already know about web 2.0 applications.

As part of the workshop, each participant had to review a web 2.0 application and post the review in a wiki. I reviewed Second Life since I've been spending a lot of time there lately.

I'm going to include part of my review here because these are things I've been thinking about a lot lately:

Educational Potential

As many people are realizing, SL has a lot of potential for educational uses. (Dozens of colleges, universities, libraries, and professional organizations are currently using SL.) Some of the ways SL can be used have been documented on the SLEducation (Second Life in Education) wiki. For me the greatest potential of SL is for networking and my own professional development.


Cautions

The lack of web access is a definite disadvantage for students who do not own computers and depend on a school's computer labs, even if the institution is fully supporting the educational use of SL and permits the software to be downloaded to all computers on campus. The software is also frequently updated, which would make maintenance on campus more time consuming.

. . . As I mentioned, SL has a lot of potential, but we need to be careful not to try to do things in SL that can be done better with other tools or in other venues.

Wikinomics

This week I finally finished reading Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. There's a companion web site for the book. If I had known that the book was more about economics than wikis, I probably wouldn't have bought it. However, it was in this book that I first heard about Second Life, which I joined this last week (more later). In addition, reading about the Geek Squad and Best Buy in the book convinced me to go to Best Buy yesterday to get a new video card and additional RAM for my computer. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble with the video card, so I may need to use the Geek Squad as well.

It's a Wiki Wacky World

I recently read Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools by M. Katherine Brown, Brenda Huettner, and Char James-Tanny. I learned about the book when I read an article on "Using Wikis" by Huetter and James-Tanny in the January 2007 issue of intercom. Part II, "Evaluating the Tools," was particularly useful, but I was disappointed by their companion wiki, It's a Wiki Wacky World.

I'm currently reading Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.

Technical Writing and Web 2.0

The theme for the January issue of Intercom was technical writing and Web 2.0. The best articles were "Writing and Web 2.0," "Podcasting: A New Layer of Communication," and "Using Wikis."

In "Writing and Web 2.0," Keith Hoffman discussed social networking, AJAX-based web sites, blogs, wikis, podcasts, and RSS, as well as web-based word processing. There are several items in his list of "Suggested Readings" that I'd like to look at.

The authors of "Using Wikis," Brenda Huettner and Char James-Tanny, along with M. Katherine Brown, have used a wiki, It's a Wiki Wacky World, to write a book titled Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools. I bought a copy of their book, along with copies of Wikis: Tools for Information Work and Collaboration by Jane Klobas, which I've already read, and Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Change Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.

These should be useful for the formal report assignment I'm planning for my technical writing class.

I decided that to find time to read these books and others related to my work, I had to stop reading the murder mysteries I was getting from the library.

Purpose of This Blog

After Richardson's book, I read Classroom Blogging: A Teacher's Guide to the Blogosphere by David F. Warlick. I didn't find it as useful, but it also helped inspire me to start this blog. I'm planning to use it to keep a record of my reading and ideas relating to my teaching, mostly writing but also some math.

More recently I read Wikis: Tools for Information Work And Collaboration by Jane Klobas and others. It's a great reference to have on hand; unfortunately, it costs almost $60, so I had to settle for checking it out of the library, though I would like to own a copy. The authors created a wiki to accompany the book. It includes an overview of the book and a page for each chapter. I just wish it provided more information, especially the links in the book.

Inspiration for Teaching and Blogging

In November I read Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson. At the time I was thinking about changing careers, but this book inspired me to continue teaching. In the book, Richardson covers

• the read/write web
• weblogs
• wikis
• RSS
• social bookmarking
• images online
• podcasting and screencasting

What got me most excited was reading about blogs, wikis (which I'd only learned of a few weeks earlier), and RSS feeds and the ideas I had for using them in my classes, particularly the research writing classes (particularly ENG 122 at Red Rocks) that I frequently teach.

Unfortunately, I'm not scheduled to teach ENG 122 this coming semester, but as soon as I do again, I want to use what I learned from Richardson by having the students create and maintain their own blogs to record their research and establish an account where they can track RSS feeds from sites relating to their topics. I'm also thinking about creating a class wiki about research, from generating research questions to documentation styles but focusing on reviews of search engines, metacrawlers, directories, and other internet research tools. When I taught ENG 122 last year, I had the students demonstrate search engines and metacrawlers in class. I want to expand that assignment in the future to include, at least, directories, and to have the students in groups develop criteria for evaluating research tools, select the best examples, demonstrate the ones selected, and record their decisions and reviews in the wiki.

I also intend to establish a blog or blogs for the on-campus classes (as opposed to online and blended/hybrid) I teach to communicate with students. There are a couple of full-time faculty members at Red Rocks who have their ENG 121 (essay writing) students create blogs, but I'm not ready to go that far with my classes this semester: ENG 090 (developmental essay writing), ENG 121, and ENG 131 (technical writing). I do think it would be appropriate to do something with blogs and wikis in my technical writing class; I just haven't figured out what.

As a result of reading Richardson's book, I established an account with Bloglines to keep track of blogs related to my work. I also created an account with Furl, but I decided to switch to del.icio.us and will be closing out the Furl account. I used to have a lot of bookmarks for my classes (primarily research related) in an account with MyBookmarks, but when I didn't use it for a few months, it was closed, and I lost all the links I'd collected. At least with del.icio.us, I can backup my bookmarks. I think the tags are interesting, but I'd really prefer a more hierarchical method of organization: folders within folders.