A wiki is a website that allows users to add, remove, or edit all content quickly and easily without the need for registration. A blog is like a journal entry where you can post entries daily about anything. One strength of the blog is that the most recent entry is listed first. One weakness of the wiki is that the content can sometimes be misleading. People add incorrect information on wikis. They are not always written by experts. A wiki enables documents to written together in a simple markup language. Wikis can be created and updated easily. A wiki weakness is that you do not have to register so people can mess around with your stuff.We haven't talked about wikis yet (although many of you at least viewed one when we were developing our student survey). I see a lot of potential for their use, but I still have concerns about the limitations on editing (that only one person can be editing it at a time - that's somewhat problematic with our class sizes). Some of the free wikis online (like pbwiki that I've been using) are adding features left and right, so by the time we look at them more in-depth in the fall I'm hoping some of the bumps get smoothed out. But I thought Vicki's students did a really nice job of explaining the differences in a way that someone who only knows a little bit about them can understand what they said.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
The Difference Between Blogs and Wikis
Vicki Davis has a nice post summarizing what her students think are the differences between blogs and wikis. A small excerpt (but go read the whole thing):
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Actually, if you talk to my students, they will say that they prefer wikis. The secret to doing wikis in a large class is to put them in pairs. For example, if you look at my blog, our first wiki experience used this model. I created a page and listed approximately 6 terms having to do with Web 2.0 and made a wiki to link. I split them into teams and they had to investigate and post on their wiki. They work together, discuss, and make sure they each contribute (so they each get graded correctly.)
ReplyDeleteWikis are great! I actually had two classes learning the same thing and we collaborated across classrooms. As for errors, it is easier for the teacher to fix errors in wikis than in blogs. If you go to my blog, you can type in wiki and read a lot of the experiences I have had with wikis. I think they are the most revolutionary tool I've used in my classroom.