Wiki and Blog

I found a number of other sites with information about wikis today. Athabasca University’s International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL) web site contains a wealth of information. I really enjoyed reading the article about Educational Wikis. I made sure to bookmark the IRRODL web site, especially since distance education is one of my primary interests in educational technology.

I like the flexibility wikis offer. Being able to use them as “knowledge repositories” seems a great tool to use in any course. Their functionality as tools to help create communities of practice is another key benefit. The fact that anyone can edit any page on a wiki has been a deterrent to their more rapid adoption; nevertheless, being able to password protect pages should overcome this obstacle. Although there are other significant challenges, such as issues related to formatting and attributing credit for postings, the benefits offered by wikis seem to make them a worthwhile tool to include in any educational technologist’s repertoire.

I also read an interesting article on using blogs as project management tools. The Virtues of Chitchat discusses how many IT organizations in particular are blogging to track implementation of various projects. It even gives another name to it – plog – standing for project log. One big caution the article mentioned I need to be careful of. “Yes, ‘blogorrhea’—the unedited stream-of-consciousness blather that afflicts so many bloggers—is a genuine risk.” I hope I do not fall into that pattern in my admittedly somewhat long posts. I’ll let you be the judge of that.

One more short note.

Someone recently referred me to a tool to use for off-line blogging. Apparently it allows users to write their blogs off-line. They can connect to the internet at a later time and upload their blogs. It works with Blogger, Moveable Type, and several others. For more information go to the Blogjet web site.