Wiki

Last week our class learned about wiki's and how they are incorporated into the classroom. As my group took a look at the tool, we learned a lot about the overall benefit of using a wiki for educational purposes. I have used PBWorks and Google docs in the past and have found them to be a beneficial tool for collaborative work. The first time I used a wiki for school work was in IDT 200. We had group assignments and our instructor had us use the tool (Google docs) to post our assignments for class instead of doing paper assignments. I personally enjoyed the fact that we as group did not need to show up to class and could finish our assignment outside of school, however it did have a major drawback. We had to take turns editing the document. My group decided to split up editing times and we had to wait until one person finished before another could edit. I can see why we would not want to edit at the same time. It would be hard to change information while another person is writing and so on and so forth. My second experience with wikis was during IDT 440. Yet another project that involved group work, we primary used PBWorks for logging our weekly reports. I personally like to use PBWorks for the fact that the we got credit for what we contributed onto the wiki as well as had a workspace we as a group could contribute to.

Blogs

In IDT 351, I am learning about different web tools and how they can be effective in different learning or teaching tools other than traditional methods such as open discussion. The first tool we covered was blogs. Blogs are easy to learn, much like the other tools we will be going over. I have learned that blogs can be used as a "voice" for students when contributing to discussions in class. Journal entries using blogs is a common use, like the one I am writing in for this course. In our textbook Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson, lists a variety of ways weblogs can be used in the classroom. Some items from the list were kind of interesting because I would not have thought about them being used other than the pen and paper method since most of my writing exercises in  high school  and college courses were only done on pen and paper for the most part and not the computer, especially in English classes. Maybe now some of my past instructors are adapting these methods into the classroom, assuming they are still teaching.

There are several blogs out there that are useful and free. Blogger, Drupal, and WordPress, just to name a few, are used by many different bloggers. I will be using WordPress in my IDT 480 course soon and I am curious to see what it has to offer since this is my first experience using blogs ever.

First Blog

I will use this site to blog about my experiences in instructional design and what I encounter as a last semester undergrad. Topics I include will be on my reactions to my courses this semester, trends I notice in the field, and what I learned from my courses as I take them. If I decide to continue to graduate studies, I may expand it to those courses as well for future blogging.

From what I understand, connective writing is writing in a area where you could connect with others and they can post comments on your posts. I also believe connective writing would be something you can search from by using a search engine and share it your topics with others who might have come across your post. If you have a Twitter or Facebook account, you could possibly share your blog on your social network and then who ever on your friends list interested could comment or share your blog on their page. Connective writing is a wonderful tool because you can "connect" with anyone you allow your postings to be connected with.