Wikis and Blogs for the Classroom

It's been way too long since I have posted anything on the blog. I think life just gets in the way and sometimes I get discouraged by the monotony of the day to day-especially in the area of work that I am involved in- online learning. Sometimes you need to read an article or go see a talk to feel motivated and realize that what you are doing daily is really worth it!

I had this experience yesterday after going to a talk at the University of Calgary. The talk was given by Dr. Curtis Bonk of Indiana University - a guru in Blended Learning and in Educational Technology. I loved his passion for his profession. He was a great speaker and certainly brought up some interesting points. Loved it when he said "STOP comparing face to face with blended learning... they are 2 different strategies for teaching." Anyways as a result of his talk I have felt re-invigorated about e-learning and about what I do, day in and day out.

I was forwarded a really great article on the use of Wikis in the class and I am extracting the tips that were offered from the article:

Approach 1: Student Journaling
Instructors want students to journal for a number of reasons: to demonstrate writing proficiency, to expose understanding (and misunderstanding) of conceptual knowledge, to establish the habit of regular reflection, and to engage in meta-cognitive reflection, to name a few. The wiki allows students to journal for their own benefit, or for peer or instructor review.

Approach 2: Personal Portfolios
By enabling students to collect and organize digital assets such as course notes, images, Web resources, and PowerPoint slides, the wiki can help learners to make connections between and among those assets.

Approach 3: Collaborative Knowledge Base
In the more classic use of the wiki, groups can use the environment to create a shared knowledge base of information. This can be used to allow students to develop a project in small groups, to work on a small piece of a larger class project, or even to have students themselves create and maintain the course Web site.

Approach 4: Research Coordination and Collaboration
The wiki allows multiple collaborators who are separated by physical space to collect ideas, papers, timelines, documents, datasets, and study results into a collective digital space. Researchers can also use the space to store draft files for their papers: MS Word, LaTEX, or even writing directly into the Web pages of the wiki. Additionally, funders and junior researchers can be given "read only" access to all or certain parts of the space.

Approach 5: Curricular and Cross-Disciplinary Coordination
As departments become increasingly creative in their efforts to accommodate more students in a distributed/blended learning environment, curricular coordination among faculty and T.A.s gets increasingly important. The wiki allows for departmental personnel, instructors, and teaching assistants to organize common course assets, such as syllabi, office hours, and assessments, without having an endless email chain or difficult to schedule face-to-face meetings.

Use Case 6: Conference and Colloquia Web Site/Coordination
Many departments, schools, and scholarly centers at the university have academic conferences and colloquia. By allowing presenters and attendees access to add and edit content, the conference wiki can serve as a resource before, during, and after the event itself. The wiki can also be used by conference administrators as a means of organizing the event.

(Examples from: http://www.campus-technology.com/news_article.asp?id=17502 )