Thursday, January 15th, 2009...3:45 am
How to Teach with Blogs and Wikis
How do you learn best?
Learning is an active, social process. Using Blogs and Wikis for teaching is embracing the concept that students don’t learn best passively, they learn best from using experiential and constructivist learning.
Above: Kolb’s Learning Cycle
Using blogs and/or wikis for teaching is a great solution for encouraging reflection and collaboration with your learners.
If you are unsure of what they are or the difference between the two, take a look here:
The argument for a wiki…..
A wiki encourages collaborative learning. It can be used to summarise small group discussions, giving greater value to small group interaction and building an online archive of student activities. They have the potential to build effective bridges between group discussion and individual learning, face-to-face and e-learning provision and to foster a deep engagement between students and their subject matter.
The argument for a blog…..
Simply put, reflection is the process of making sense of one’s experience. Reflection can be said to act as a hinge between practical knowledge and theoretical knowledge.
More about Blogs and wikis
- 7 things you should know about Blogs [PDF] – EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative
- 7 things you should know about wikis [PDF] – EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative
Using Wikis in Education
- Using wikis in Education – [PDF]
Using blogs in education
- Edublogs – an Australian site based on WordPress that offers free accounts for personal users in education as well as an enterprise solution for educational institutions – http://edublogs.org
- EdNA groups – services are free to organisations that are part of the education and training community – http://www.groups.edna.edu.au
- Blogs in Education, University of Houston, has links to lots more blogging resources – http://awd.cl.uh.edu/blog/
- Educational use of blogs – Reflecting, Writing and Responding: Reasons Students Blog [PDF] – http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI3010.pdf
Where to now?
Try following some of the instructions on our ‘23 things‘ project. This will help you to set up a blog.
If you are wanting to improve your blogging skills… try joining this project (based on a wiki):
If you use a Wordpress blog….
Instructions on how to set up a blog
Or an Edublogs blog….
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7 Comments
January 15th, 2009 at 7:02 am
Hi Jenny,
I do wish that I had seen this about four moths ago as I started a unit called Online Training and education at unimelb.
There is so much information on the internet to try to follow. I’m glad we have socil book marking to give us a hand.
Well, it’s on to day 11 for another try. The Google Analytics did not work the first time that I tried it.
REgards, Bill Oldham
[Reply]
January 15th, 2009 at 7:38 am
I enjoy reading your blog and I think this is a very informative post, Jenny. Thanks. As an adult learner, and novice blogger, I must say that I find the active, social and constructivist aspects of this way of learning very meaningful.
[Reply]
January 16th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Hi Jenny
A great post. I use wikis and blogs with teachers and trainee teachers as a support network. On of the things that I have found is that wikis allow for a greater collaboration and discussion that is not just to ways (blog and reader) but in any and many directions. This means that I tend to use wikis for collaborative learning and support networks and blogs to stimulate discussions and share resources.
How do you decide which to use when?
Ps the link to the difference between blogs and wikis is broken.
[Reply]
alijoy Reply:
January 16th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Can’t spell two! Apologies.
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jennywood Reply:
January 16th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Hi Alijoy,
Thanks for your comment. It is good to hear from someone using them with teachers.
I guess we need to choose according to the needs of our students and the program we are delivering but a good question.
Thanks for mentioning the link… that kind of thing can go unnoticed and is very annoying!
Jenny
[Reply]
October 20th, 2009 at 5:36 am
Wow great post, i never seen this much informative post anywhere before, your post, keywords, your font style everything is fabulous, i am sure you will get hundred of comments for your this post, i am really enjoying to write here.
[Reply]
jennywood Reply:
October 20th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
@Character Education,
[Reply]
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