Week 3 Reflections on Blogs, Wiki's and Websites

BLOG

Having never heard the term blog before and therefor having no idea what one was, it was described to me as an online journal/diary which had the function for other people to read and comment on. Whilst this was a new concept to me, I was able to envisage how it worked and the benefits of its functions. Once I was past the initial 'signing up' process I found navigating my way around Blogger relatively easy and user friendly and was able to find the basic features and setup of it without to much trouble.

From my basic understanding this far, blogs have a specific layout with being in reverse chronological order (newest post being read first). This is a good feature if you regularly follow someones blog rather than scrolling all the way to the bottom in order to read their latest post. I have also found you can customise the layout/design of your blog with different colours, features and themes depending with what you are blogging about. my findings have also found that there are numerous forms of media that you can embed in your blog, such as videos, photos, pictures and also the availability to linking websites. Although blogs are single author , they allow for comments to be written by other people which is convenient for feedback. I also like the idea that you can follow someones blogs and keep up to date with their writing and thoughts.

I can see the use of blogs can be integrated into  my Manual Arts discipline. Obviously this subject is  divided into a practical component coupled with a theory element to support this. My initial idea would be to have students use a blog to record all their thoughts and ideas about an assignment they were working on and the process and steps they were taking to get there. Every week they could write any new thoughts and ideas that they had about their project and process and embed photos/pictures into it and link websites where they had found similar projects. This was originally done all manually with a portfolio that would be supplied with all their workings in however a blog would allow for more information to be stored and also allow for other students and the teacher to follow their process on the way and also make suggestions.

WIKI

I found creating my own Wiki considerably more difficult than my blog. I struggled to understand the concept of it, how and why I was creating users and where I would ever use something of this nature in my classroom. The wiki task last week (deBono's Hats theory) was a good starting point for me into seeing the benefits of this form of ICT and how it worked. However it was only after watching this weeks short video (on vimeo in Moodle) that I was really able to understood how Wiki worked and the benefits of using it (although it is still very unfamiliar to me as I would pick up a phone and call someone any day over emailing them haha)

I found navigating myself around my Wiki more difficult and found it not as user friendly as my blog. Whilst I found the basic features I don't believe there is as much to customise/personalise in this as there was in Blogger (Or this could simply be my lack of skill in navigating around Wiki).  Wiki offers a multi author facility where anyone can add/edit/delete information. This information can be in the form of text, pictures/images, videos and links to websites.

Wiki could be a useful activity to use in my class when doing group assignments/class assignments and where I need students to work collaboratively on the one activity. An example of this would be if the class were collaborating together on a class project and each person (or small group) were given things to do/research etc. They could then add their information on what was needed for the project, what items had been found, links to other pages on ideas etc (I got this idea from the camping trip wiki on moodle).

WEBSITES

Out of the three online spaces investigated this week, websites is the one I am most familiar with and knowledgeable about. I have previously been part of creating my own website for my business. Whilst I was not the person building the website I was a part of the layout, structure and editing of it.

I am unsure how I would use this in the classroom. My only thoughts are to have this as a 'go to' website for students when it came to assignments etc. As the teacher I could upload criteria sheets, task descriptions, referencing guides, manuals, explanation videos etc that the students could access whenever they needed to. This could also eliminate any excuses on students losing any required paperwork.