Building an online presence: Blogs and wikis

 

(Week 3: Jan 23 - 29)

 

 

 

Moderators:  Hala Fawzi (Sudan), Marijana Smolcec (Croatia), &  Sharon Betts (USA)

Guest presenter: Graham Stanley

 

Please listen to the audio about this week's activities.

 

 

Objectives

 

By the end of this week you will have: learned about different blogs, wikis, and Social Network providers explored different features of blogs, wikis and Social Networks created your own blog and/or wiki created a Twitter account  followed the baw2012 twitter account and use the #baw2012 hasthtag   attended the live session on the topic of the week commented on the presentation of the week

 

Activities

 

Task 1

• What is your definition of a blog, a wiki, and a Social Network? How are they similar/different? If you would like some ideas, take a look at the suggested readings for this week. Also, there are many videos that would be interesting to explore on our Tutorials page.

• Check others' blogs; here is an example of Steven Anderson's blog.

• Where do you start? Try here: Creating your blogger blog  (image and description tutorial) by Karl Fisch.
• Create your blog and/or wiki. To be able to pay you a visit at your newly born blog/and or wiki, it's very important to share the address (es) in the Participants Productions page.
  
• Create your twitter account and follow the baw2012 here. Don't forget to tweet using our hashtag #baw2012.
• For more help on how to create a twitter account, blog or a wiki you may also check Tutorials  page.

 

Task 2

        Congratulations and welcome to the blogsphere! Now, explore the different features and try to:

• post some comments on other participants' blogs that you can find in Participants Productions page
• moderate comments
• write your first post and embbed videos or audio recordings you created in week 2
• post pictures or slideshows
• customize the header
• post widgets
• invite people to contribute as collaborators and authors

 

Task 3

        Also, explore our wiki and try to:

• create headlines for the different sections
• create Table of Contents 
• make a word bold
• insert slideshows
• post pictures
• create new pages

 

Task 4

• Join us for Graham Stanley's presentation " Using Social Networks when creating your PLN" at Elluminate, on Monday, Jan. 23 at 8:00 PM GMT

       (check local times here)

• Share your reflections on the session in our "Comment Live Sessions" page 

 

Learning Times and Elluminate tutorial

 

 

Tools to explore

 

Blogs
Blogger	EduBlogs
Wordpress	Posterous
Wikis
Pbworks	Wetpaint
Wikispaces	Wikidot
Social Networks
Twitter	Facebook
Twiducate	Cloudworks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Self-check   I have.... learned about different blogs, wikis, and Social Network providers explored different features of blogs, wikis and Social Networks created my own blog and/or wiki added the link of my wiki/blog to the Participants' Productions page created a Twitter account  followed the baw2012 twitter account #baw2012  attended the live session/listened to the recording commented on the live session

 

 

Suggested readings

 

• Blogging with students (1): Why get them blogging?

 

• 7 things you should know about wikis (2005). Educause Learning Initiative, Jul. 2005.

 

• Alden, Chris (2006). How blogs can make the link. The Guardian, Jan. 2006

 

• Borau, Kerstin, Ullrich, C., Feng, J. & Shen, R. (2009). Microblogging for Language Learning: Using Twitter to Train Communicative and Cultural Competence. Advances in Web Based Learning - ICWL 2009 

 

• Campbell, Aaron. (2003). Weblogs for Use with ESL Classes  

 

•  Duffy, Peter and Bruns, Axel (2006).The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. Proceedings Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006.

 

• Klingensmith, Kate (2009). A Teacher's Guide to Twitter. Feb. 2009.

 

• Nelson, Melanie and Lewis, Karen. How do I start? Blogging Basics.

 

• Pang, Chiew. Why Twitter for Teachers? (A collection of articles, resources, etc. for teachers and others to see the benefit of social networks such as Twitter).

 

• Stanley, Graham (2005). Blogging for ELT.

 

• Using Wikis in ELT. Nov. 2011. (Summary of a very lively discussion held in Twitter by the #ELT Chat group).

 

• What to do with wikis - an ELT perspective. TEFLGeek. Nov. 2011.