Blog Vs Wiki Vs Website

Blogs in an educational context

I feel lucky that I have already have the opportunity to blog before, over the last couple of years I have blogged on and off about my life as a runner at My Vibrams and Me. Over this period of time I found that I've enjoyed blogging as it gave me time to form my personal thoughts on running and life. Unfortunately since I sustained an injury last march I have been unable to run, therefor unable to blog.

This blog was created for an assessment within one my GDLT university courses but I fully intend to continue maintaining it throughout my university Couse and into my teaching career, regularly adding interesting educations news, theories and techniques.

Positives  A quick and easy way to deliver content to large audiences. Allows personal reflection. Can be a source of free content to people interested in a particular subject.. Great way to network with people with a similar interest.

Minuses  Can portray a negative image if there are grammatical/spelling errors in your post. Authors have complete anonymity People can publish unreliable information

Interesting Can embed RSS feeds for the latest news on a particular subject. Can earn money from advertising if the blog becomes big enough.

How will this blog be used.
This blog will cater for upcoming and current teachers wanting the latest information on education research, policy and theory. I will be focusing on the role of technology in the classroom and how it can be successfully implemented to foster more engaged learning.

Wiki's in an education context.

Strengths Ability to collate large amounts Knowledge from a geographically large and diverse audience. Freely available Ease of use Facilitates networking	Weaknesses Anyone can edit the content Incorrect information may be published Defamatory language can be easily used Only as effective as user’s level of knowledge
Opportunities Encourages collaboration Encourages fact checking Allows reflection of our own work	Threats Can create plagiarism issues Can be taken as a reliable source of information Users can delete content they do not personally agree with

I believe the success of a wiki is based on two components, the level of moderation and the way in which a wiki is utilised. For our wiki last week we had to add our thoughts on a particular subject, in this way a wiki is used as a central space for opinion to be heard. In my opinion Wiki’s work best when they are made to define a certain topic, this is evident by the website www.wikipeda.com. As mentioned above moderation is an integral part of a wiki, moderation identifies and removes defamatory, incorrect and irrelevant text that does not belong on the wiki.

Websites in an education context. 

We have just been able to set up out website so I am unsure what potential the website has in an education context. As I familiarise myself with the process of creating a website I will return to write more here.

Strengths	Weaknesses
Opportunities	Threats