Blogs and Wikis
So what are they?
Blog is short for Web Log- an online journal. Read the Wikipedia entry here
People blog because they want to share with others. They may share their opinions, rants on particular topics, or news from a holiday. They may even have a professional blog where they share views on their industry, or they may have a blog all about their pet. When you’re blogging, you can adopt any persona you like. Some people have written from a cat’s perspective.
Many companies have an ‘official’ blog, where they release news about the company and views about the industry. Some blogs are highly successful due to the personality of the blog’s author. Some blogs have multiple authors. Blogs can be used very effectively for educational purposes: a shared project by students can be created and showcased on a blog; teachers can post notes, lectures, FAQs and various resources on a central blog for their students.
Look at these sites for more information:
- Blogger.com Official Site
- WordPress.com Official Site
- Should bloggers unionize? Better question: Why do you blog?
Wiki- like a blog but open to all to contribute and edit content.
A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and perhaps the most well known of these knowledge sharing tools, but with the benefits that wikis provide the use and popularity of these tools is exploding. Check out Yarra Plenty Regional Library’s Wikipedia entry here.
Some of the benefits that make the use of wikis so attractive are:
- Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.
- Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up on what been changed and by whom.
- Earlier versions of a page can be rolled back and viewed when needed.
- Users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or add and edit content. In most cases simple syntax structure is used.
Resources:
