Blogs, Wikis, and Other Online Writing Processes

Note: I will use this blog post to support a presentation I'm doing for my EDUC638 class on October 19, 2010. It might or might nor be of interest to my regular audience. Short URL to this post: http://bit.ly/EDUC638-blogswikis

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For those who don't know yet, I've finally decided to start using my fee waivers and enrolled in EDUC638 Learning Technology Across The Curriculum. As a part of my coursework, I have to present on the topic of blogs and wikis, and how to use them in education.

I have always felt weird that blogs and wikis are bunched together all the time. In my opinion, they are completely different technologies. My presentation will address that, and go beyond the traditional notion of blogs and wikis to explore other online writing technologies and context.

Blogs wikis

View more presentations from Mathieu Plourde.

Activities:

• 1. Blogs vs. Wikis: http://sync.in/NtfcYXQH0j
• 2. Quadrants: http://sync.in/BSHWK7lBJw
• 3. Blockers: http://sync.in/BSb3johh92
• 4. Things That Should Remain Private: http://sync.in/JwLUYREwPG

My Wiki Report:

• Plourde, Mathieu (2008), Wikis in Higher Education, University of Delaware.

Videos: 

• Wikis in Plain English: http://youtu.be/-dnL00TdmLY
• Blogs in Plain English: http://youtu.be/NN2I1pWXjXI
• Use of Blogs in Anu Sivaraman's Marketing Classes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oiW4UoHya4
• Why Christopher Penna Uses Google Docs vs. Wikis for Collaborative Writing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCBd9JE5uwk
  

Resources Cited in Slides:

• Barton, Matt (2004). Embrace the Wiki Way!, Personal Blog. Retrieved online October 18, 2010. http://www.mattbarton.net/tikiwiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=4 
• Carvin, Andy (2007), Timeline: The Life of the Blog, NPR. Retrieved online October 18, 2010. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17421022 
• Cunningham, Ward (1995), Wiki History. Retrieved online October 18, 2010. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiHistory 
• Grenier, Brian (2007), Wikis in the Classroom, El Paso Independent School District. Retrieved October 26, 2007. http://www.slideshare.net/briangrenier/wikis-in-the-classroom-34105 
• Kerner, Sean Michael (2006), Creator of the wiki admits that he considered patenting the concept a decade ago, QuinStreet Inc. Retrieved online October 18, 2010. http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3648131 
• Lamb, Bryan (2004), Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no. 5 (September/October 2004). Pages 36-48. 
• McMillan, Karen (2010), Learning to Blog on Paper, personal blog. Retrieved online October 18, 2010. http://www.notesfrommcteach.com/2010/09/learning-to-blog-using-paper.html 
• Mott, Jonathan (2010), Envisioning the Post-LMS Era: The Open Learning Network, EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 1. Pages 36-48. 
• Shirky, Clay (2003). Wikis, Graffiti, and Process, Many-To-Many: Social Software, August 26, 2003. Retrieved online October 18, 2010. http://many.corante.com/20030801.shtml 
• Turnbull, Giles (2004). Talking to Ward Cunningham about Wiki, luvly, April 6, 2004. Retrieved online October 18, 2010. http://gorjuss.com/luvly/20040406-wardcunningham.html

Branded to Learn: Leveraging Social Media Conversations

On October 5, 2010, I have presented at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Delaware about the use of social media for learning. I don't think I'm an expert in this (anyone who claims to be a social media guru is a poser, in my opinion), but some might see some of the things I have experienced in the past as "social media micro-successes", for lack of finding a better term...

Before I dig into a laundry list of slides, videos, and resources, I'd like to use a quote from Clay Shirky's most recent book, Cognitive Surplus. Describing the ever-widening gap between him and his NYU students...

They can understand the shift from scarcity to abundance, since the process is still going on today. A much harder thing to explain to them is this: if you were a citizen of that world [before the Internet], and you had something you needed to say in public, you couldn't. Period. Media content wasn't produced by consumers; if you had the wherewithal to say something in public, you weren't a consumer anymore, by definition. Movie reviews came from movie reviewers. Public opinions came from opinion columnists. Reporting came from reporters. (page 61)

Now that any cellphone becomes a means of self-expression and a public conversation device, it's hard to imagine what it was like, even 10 years ago.

This presentation is a mix of my personal experience with social media, how I got introduced to it, used it, and tailored it to make me aware of the world and make the world aware of me. Social media is a weird new space, where you need to brag a little to get noticed, and where it's not always frowned upon to do so (see Self-Service: The Delicate Dance of Online Bragging for more on this subject).

10-5-2010 Branded to Learn

View more presentations from Mathieu Plourde.

• List of tools I use
• Pics from the event

Below is a list of links pointing to tools I referred to in my presentation. Have fun exploring! 

Personal Productivity Tools

• Diigo (social bookmarking)
• Delicious (social bookmarking)
• Evernote (note taking)
• Dropbox (file storage)
• Google Alerts (awareness)
• Pageflakes (startpage)

Social Networking Tools

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• SocialOomph

Enhanced Reality Tools

• QR codes and barcode readers
• Foursquare (geo-location)

Content Hosting and Creation

• Youtube
• Slideshare
• Flickr
• Google tools
• Creative Commons

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Short URL to this page: http://bit.ly/branded2learn

Sakai@UD Deployment Update

As many of you probably know if you are ready this post, I am the Project Leader of our WebCT to Sakai migration at the University of Delaware. More that two years ago, before I even started working her at UD, the LMS selection process began with an attempt to get faculty involved with the decision making.

Below is a slidecast of my November 2, 2009 presentation to the Faculty Senate about our progress in migrating users from WebCT to Sakai. Some of you might be interested in some of the metrics that are included in this presentation to sell Sakai as a viable solution for higher education.

11-02-2009 Sakai Faculty Senate

View more documents from Mathieu Plourde.

More information is available at the following links:

• Faculty Senate Presentation page: http://tinyurl.com/sakai-fs
• UDLMS project follow-up site: http://www.udel.edu/udlms
• Sakai@UD Gateway: http://www.udel.edu/sakai

Members of the audience reacted very positively to the slide about the progression of the number of course sites using an LMS, and to the state of the LMS in peer institutions. Sakai has a lot of momentum at this point in time, and it's great to see all these top notch institutions getting onboard!

How is your LMS selection/migration going at your institution? Please leave a comment!

Social Media: What's In It For Me?

I have just completed something I should have done a long time ago... I have created a slidecast of a presentation I gave to the CHEP teaching with technology community of practice back in March 2009.

It's a little long (30 minutes), but it explain the process I have been through and the benefits of constructing a personal learning network (PLN). I hope my story will convince other people to give it a try.

3-9-2009 WIIFM Preso - CHEP

View more Microsoft Word documents from Mathieu Plourde.

One of the reason why I publish this now is because of Alec Couros' keynote address we had last week at the Summer Faculty Institute. He did a splendid job at exposing what a connected teacher should now be. The video of his presentation is embedded below.



Please share your personal learning network stories in the comments, because the more you share, the more you get back!