One thing I would like to recommend first to everyone in the 23 things class is that they add a subscription to RSS on their blogs. Once you do the RSS assignment you will see how important it is to make it easier for others to follow your blog. I, of course, am getting lazy to actually visit your blogs and want them on my reader :)
Also you can sign up for an RSS feed to your own blog's comments in Google Reader. That way you can monitor if your blog has received a comment without actually going there.
I have created my first wiki: Cool Crete. It is a place that lists links of interesting websites about concrete. I am not totally obsessed with concrete, but it was the easiest thing I could think of to quickly build a wiki.
Wetpaint was easy to use and get started. Since I do not really want to maintain this site I did not use all of its features. But it has a really nice setup for evaluating your wiki as far as helping you get traffic on it. You can e-mail all of your friends and it helps with setting up titles, tags, and headings for search engines.
I did not mess with the picture part of it too much because they had to be formatted smaller than my images I have conveniently on hand. I would like to be able to add my own background to the template to make it more interesting.
The basic posting of starting a thread was very easy and I think students would be able to use a wiki well. The future use that I am thinking about using wikis for would be a site dedicated to my WebPals project. It could be a place to invite classes to participate, explain how to participate, and discuss problems/solutions.
Overall, my feeling right now is that I like blogs better than wikis. Maybe because I want to control content. It seems like anything in a wiki could also be in a blog with a discussion in the comments, but perhaps the discussion nature of wikis encourages people to be involved with them.
Nice photo gallery, was that create in wetpaint?
ReplyDeleteLooks like we're the only one trying to get done early. Keep up the good work!
Tell me more about your WebPals project.
ReplyDeletecould comment under my Thing 10 post.
The photo gallery was created by adding a slideshow gadget under the layout feature in blogspot. It was super easy but gives no options as far as size of the player. I wish I could make it larger.
ReplyDeleteWebPals is based on the pen pal idea of building international friendships. Gordon Allport's Contact Theory (1954) is the rationale behind it "stating that intergroup contact would lead to reduced intergroup prejudice if the contact situation embodies four conditions: 1) equal status between the groups in the situation; 2) common goals; 3) no competition between the groups; and 4) authority sanction for the contact." (Pettigrew and Tropp, "Summary of A Meta-Analytic Test and Reformulation of Intergroup Contact Theory" at http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/meta-elements/html/troppsummary.htm)
My plan is to use webcams, micophones, and Skype to have weekly contacts between individual students in my class and individuals in a class in another country to build friendships, learn culture, and in the end decrease prejudice and increase tolerance. I would also like to see it grow into some kind of social action collaboration.
I agree with you subscribing to everyone's RSS feed is a great idea and an efficient way to keep up with the blogs. It could also be one way for teachers to keep up with their students' blogs.
ReplyDelete