Blogs and Wikis: Two Outstanding EDUCAUSE Review Articles. Wow. That's about all, i can comment. Wow.
The newest EDCAUSE Review has not one, but two top
notch articles on things near and dear to the CogDog, blogs and wikis.
These are so good I am ready to print them, something I almost never do
(at least to stop that annoying Educause web design of having the
graphi of the cover bounce with every page scroll).
In Educational Blogging
Stephen Downes not only provides a wide and detailed view of weblogs
and educators who are doing it well, but he hits the stride of the
article in a most appropriate manner It opens not with a definition of
weblogs or a proclamation that it will revolutionize education, but he
opens with a real story, something meaningful, a description of Institut St-Joseph where elementary schools have been active blog portfolio creators for quite some time:
This last group of students, eight or so at a time, fire up
their browsers and log into their cyberportfolios, a publication space
that Principal Mario Asselin calls a “virtual extension of the
classroom.”1 This virtual space is composed of three sets of weblogs,
or blogs: a classroom Web space, where announcements are displayed and
work of common interested is posted; a public, personal communication
zone, where students post the results of their work or reflection; and
a private personal space, reserved for students’ thoughts and teacher
guidance.
After a riveting tour across some blog history amd a tasty set of
educator blog stories, Stephen gets down to the thoughtful questions.
What will educational institutions do about blogs? Will they continue
to paint them as niche activities, as just "diaries"? I'm think Stephen
even pulled some of his usual punches, but it matters not as he fires
them from OLDaily on a regular basis.
Even better are some thoughts on what motovates blogging:
But perhaps the most telling motivation for blogging was
offered by Mark Pilgrim in his response to and elaboration on “The
Weblog Manifesto”: “Writers will write because they can’t not write.
Repeat that over and over to yourself until you get it. Do you know
someone like that? Someone who does what they do, not for money or
glory or love or God or country, but simply because it’s who they are
and you can’t imagine them being any other way?”
And then worries about what may happen if blogs get
institutionalized, when students are not writing because of the
internal motivation described above by Mark Pilgrim, but become hum
drum homework assignments?:
And herein lies the dilemma for educators. What happens
when a free-flowing medium such as blogging interacts with the more
restrictive domains of the educational system? What happens when the
necessary rules and boundaries of the system are imposed on students
who are writing blogs, when grades are assigned in order to get
students to write at all, and when posts are monitored to ensure that
they don’t say the wrong things?
This article will be one of the top must reads I refer to for an introduction on blogging.
But wait, it gets even better, and let's hear it from another Canadian, Brian Lamb, on his EDUCAUSE article Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not, where he takes on the daunting task of elucidating the mud of wikis.
Like his other articles, Brian tackles this with sharp writing,
clever wit (the headings written as WikiWords!), and some of the most
fitting quotes one could find. Where does he find them?
For example, under TheStandardObjection, why people fell uncomfortable taking wikis on:
There’s a very common reaction that newcomers express when
first introduced to wikis: “That looks promising, but it can’t work for
me.” Their objection to wikis is nearly universal: “If anybody can edit
my text, then anybody can ruin my text.” Human nature being what it is,
to allow free access to hard-earned content is to indulge open-source
utopianism beyond reason.
This concern is largely misplaced. Think of an open wiki space as a
home that leaves its front door unlocked but doesn’t get robbed because
the neighbors are all out on their front steps gossiping, keeping a
friendly eye on the street, and never missing a thing. This ethic is at
the heart of “SoftSecurity,” which relies on the community, rather than
technology, to enforce order.
Like Stephen's blogging article, this one too is rich in great and
lesser known wiki examples both in education and beyond. I'm clicking
like made, and getting lost in these excellent set of nudged resources
to explore.
Wikis will continue to be strange places, but with article's like
this one, it will help to light the way. I've already sent it to our
folks involved with using wikis on our Ocotillo efforts, as they have
struggled much to figure out "what to wiki".
Wow. Read both of this over and over, send them to colleagues, make them required readings for your workshops.
[cogdogblog]
9:45:31 AM  Google It!.
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