Blogging vs. Wiki

Thoughts on Blogging and Wikis

First, I’ll start with the genre that interested me least- the wiki. I read “Making the Case for a Wiki,” and I have to say that it really didn’t persuade me to start using it as a tool in my classroom. I have to say that I did go into reading the article with a bias, my only experience with a wiki being Wikipedia, which I feel is an unreliable source. I hate it when my students use that as a reference (even when I tell them not to), but I know that when they type something into Google or whatever, that Wikipedia entries are one of the first things to pop up. They don’t understand that they could create or edit an entry, or that they could be getting their information from someone who really knows very little about the subject, or has posted incorrect information.

But to get off of my own personal feelings about wikis, and onto the article, I think it actually reinforced my issues with wikis. Reading about the “edit wars” that take place over controversial issues only confirmed to me that there are serious issues with wikis— as far as I know, no one can delete your blog, or change your words. I suppose if the wiki had a page locking system as Tonkin suggests, then it would improve the authenticity of the wiki, and a reader could see the natural flow and progression of an idea as it is shaped. I do think the “mapping” that can take place with a wiki could be useful as well, but overall I don’t think that I will be using wikis in my classroom.

On a more positive note, I do think that blogging could be something I utilize in my teaching. I read both ”When Blogging Goes Bad…” and “New Jersery High School Learns the ABCs of Blogging,” and they both started to get the ball rolling in terms of what I could do with my students next year. I think that Krause’s story was really helpful in that he modeled what not to do, and I was able to pick up some pointers for blogging with my students. I think his biggest mistake was that the assignments and expectations were not clear to the students, and I believe he knows that. That is one thing I learned very early on in teaching— you have to spell it all out for them, or else you’ll be disappointed in the results. He also assumed that because the students were graduate students, they would be more internally motivated to do work voluntarily— well, we all know what happens when you assume. When I do use blogging in my classroom, I now know I need to be very clear about the expectations— what I want posted, how frequently, responding to the postings of other students etc.

So even though his article was about blogging gone awry, it was still very helpful to me. The article about the New Jersey high school was pretty simplistic, a cheerleader of sorts for blogging— since I read it after Krause’s article there wasn’t anything terribly new or informational about it. It was simply an example of an effective way to use blogging in your classroom that echoed what Kajder said in Chapter 8, and is an example to follow. I would have liked to hear more about how the teacher set it up, student opinions, assignments (i.e. what the study guide assignment looked like), how he got the students motivated etc. I think he could have done a lot more with that article.