Blogs and Wikis
in Academia
Engaging the World of the
“Read/Write” Web
Presented by Bill Warters OTL Faculty Fellow
Wayne 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
Digital Immigrants
Concept
map by
Michel
Cartier
Digital Natives
Where are you on this chart?

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
Higher Ed
Cartoon by Rand Renfroe

School 1.0

School 2.0

Web 2.0 = More Engaged Learning?

Learning Design Going
Forward? KM
is a Key
Competency
New Tools and Processes
Image by Bebo White

Wikis

Welcome to
the Wonderful
World of Wikis
• A Wiki is a website • “Wiki” means fast in
that allows users to Hawaiian.
freely create and edit
• Authors do not
Web page content,
always claim
usually in a Web
ownership of jointly
browser.
constructed texts.
• Wikis use simple
• Wikis provide a
formatting rules--
history and anyone
Like word processing.
can revisit prior
• Wikis are published versions of text.
online.

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

A Source of
Educational Content
• Wikipedia
Sample Student
• http://en.wikipedia.org Assignment:
1) Look up
• Wikiversity something in the
Wikipedia
• http://en.wikiversity.org
2) Do more
• Wikibooks Research to Prove
it is Correct
• http://en.wikibooks.org
• Guidelines for class projects
• WSU Class book-writing example

Wikipedia Contributors
Regular Contributors to Wikipedia (10 or more edits)
300,000 276,615
250,000
200,000
150,000
100,834
100,000
50,000 30,817
6,005
1,103
156
01
02
03
04
05
06
20
20
20
20
20
20

How Do Educators
Use 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
Internal Links: CamelCaseLink or [\"free link\"]
• 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
Headlines Format Examples
!!!Headline1 h1. Top Level Heading = Headline 1 =
!!Headline2 h2. Smaller Heading == Headline 2 ==
!Headline3 h6. Smallest Heading === Headline 3 ===

PBWiki - an Educator
Friendly Starting Place
http://xtremeweek.pbwiki.com

Overview of PBwiki
Interface and Tools

Wiki Best Practice Ideas
• Discuss ThreadMode vs DocumentMode
writing styles
As 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. Davis
http://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 State
http://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 Medicine
Local
Story-
Photos
telling

Topical Examples
Sports Cooking
Library-
Music related

Blog Growth Report
Th Tec
e S hn
tat ora
e o ti R
• 70 million weblogs Ap f th ep
ril e L or
20 ive t
07 We
• About 120,000 new weblogs each b
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

Impressive Blog Growth &
Posting Rates
60 Million
2 Million
Mar 03 Oct 06

Impressive Growth & Posting Rates
Aug 04 Nov 05 Feb 07

Easy to Use!
Demonstration of Adding a
Post in a WordPress Blog

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 Blog
http://cgi.lib.wayne.edu/blog/otl/

Free Blogs for Educators
and Students

EduBlogs
http://edublogs.org/
Learnerblogs.org for K-12 students
Edublogs.org for teachers and trainers
Uniblogs.org for university students
Eslblogs.org for ESL students

EduBlogs Intro Video

Other Free Blog Hosts
Blogger.com
Wordpress.com
Good List of 40+ Services
http://mashable.com/2007/08/06/free-blog-hosts/

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 Explained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

RSS for Educators
Explained in a PDF
Lots of Examples and Ideas
for Use in Teaching
• 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 going
http://www.teachinghacks.com/wiki/

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 • Links to Lots more
Emerging ideas
Technologies for
Scholars
• “Blog to Teach, Teach
to Blog” Course
http://tools.comm.wayne.edu/moodle/course/category.php?id=5