TikiWiki

“What is TikiWiki?”, “What does it mean? “, “ it is useful or not ?” These are good questions to answer..

“TikiWiki or Tiki “ is a kind of content management system and everybody can use it without spending any money.

The home page of Tiki is attractive, the choice of colours is successful and, at the top of the page, there are lots of bars. These are; info , documentation,development, community, themes , profiles, chat, demo. Just below these bars, there are many other options,  these are ;  get started, about , features, benefits, hosting, consultants and contact. These options are very easy to use. Another feature of this application is that you can select any language you want. There are so many language options. The other feature is that it is easy to log in but you have to wait for acceptance. It has also a calender. This application has both information about itself and many subtitles like tiki news, join tiki and tiki events, as well. You can also find some advertisements about this application in this page.

“TikiWiki” is very useful both students and adults. They can find so many kinds of documentations about almost everythıng. It has also chatrooms and discussion forums, so they can share and exchange their opinions in these places.

TikiWİki is helpful and handy not only students but also adults. Today’s world is internet era and we all use ınternet almost everythıng, so TikiWiki is one of the most important source for sharing and exchanging information. 

WIKISPACES

                                                               WIKISPACES 
The   wikispaces is  useful to learn  and  to use for  your  researchers .On  the  top  of   the  site ,for  the users ,there  are 3  main topic ,education ,business  and  personel.There is  a  headline to  draw   the  user's attention and  to  create a new  idea  on their  mind.There  are  a lot  of  visual things related  to  the  topic .Generally,the  functions of  the  site is  helpful  for  the  users ,especially for  the   students and  the  teachers.While   overlooking the  site ,a  general  criteria could  appear  on  the  mind . Users  use  the   edit  button (update any  time  ,from  anywhere) .To  complete page historis ,you  can   save  every   edit  and  revision .You  can   add  videos and  widgets   to  create   rich ,widgets  like   video  or calender that  your wiki more attractive .You  can  use  wiki spaces to  make   is  easy  to   organize group  work .The  wiki  logs every change ,so  you  can easily compare   drafts of  a  page or  revert to  an   earlies   version .There  are  some  questions   what   the   wikispaces  mean   and   how  to use this  website .For  education ,there   are minor  subjects (teachers&students,schools &districts ,universities )  Every   educational    wiki lets    you  organize   members   into  project  related   items.You  can  find  several   university  logos.At the   end  of  the  sites ,there  are  several   users'  comment to  support   discussion and  get  feedback .



Wikispaces is a Free web hosting service (sometimes called a wiki farm) based in San Francisco, California. Launched in March 2005, Wikispaces is owned by Tangient LLC and is among the largest wiki hosts, competing with PBworks, Wetpaint, Wikia, and Google Sites (formerly JotSpot).
Private wikis with advanced features for businesses, non-profits and educators are available for an annual fee. As of March 2008, they had more than 920,000 registered members and hosted more than 390,000 wikis.By March 2009, that number had increased to over 2.2 million registered members and more than 900,000 wikis. Wikispaces has also given away more than 100,000 premium wikis to K-12 educators.[
Since 2010 Wikispaces have cooperated with web 2.0 education platform Glogster EDU. Glogster EDU embeds Glogs into Wikispaces services.


http://blog.wikispaces.com/   I  think  that   this  blog   is the   best   blog  ,because you  can  see  how we use  Wikispaces ,class Wiki,student Wikis  and  you  can getting  started,when you create a new wiki you’ll be given the option to choose a wiki type. If you already have a wiki and you want to change its type, head to Manage Wikiand then Wiki Info. When you create a wiki in editable website mode, your wiki permissions will be set to protected, and comments and discussions will be disabled.

As an organizer you’ll see a rectangular icon in your black global navigation bar at the top of the screen. Click on it to reveal your edit button, page options, and action menu in the sidebar. Click it again to hide these options.

Try it out

Here are some ideas for how to use our new Editable Website wiki type:

• Create your own website. If you’re looking to share resources, videos, and links with your students or other visitors, it’s now easier than ever.
• Collaborate then publish. Start a collaborative writing project that you build with your students as a Basic Wiki. Then, when it’s ready, switch over to an Editable Website and share it with parents.
• Create public-facing content on top of your private workspaces. Our Private Label service lets you create as many wikis as you’d like to on your own site. By choosing between our new wiki types, you can decide how people interact with the content you build. Use Editable Website wikis to share news and information with your parents, community, or customers. Or set up Basic Wikis to encourage collaboration in your classrooms or departments. More options, more flexibility.

A wiki all about the project can be found here, http://wikidia.wikispaces.com
So what can you do?
Please give me some feedback.
I would like to know what you think. Please contact me via WikiSpaces messaging, or via FaceBook – my FaceBook page is http://www.facebook.com/barry.desborough You can also contact me via http://wikidia.wikispaces.com/message/list/home Given a good response, I am prepared to put some of my savings into paying for a private label which would make producing and managing the encyclopedia easier.
To support the project, go to this page, http://wikidia.wikispaces.com/Help+Out and click on the FaceBook 'like' control.
Join my 'cause' on Facebook, here, http://www.causes.com/causes/584095-support-this-free-online-educational-encyclopedia-for-children/ Invite your FaceBook friends to join, and ask them to invite their friends in turn.
Go to the test wiki, http://wikids-test-wiki.wikispaces.com/ and have a go at producing content. This is a sandbox wiki. If you wish to integrate pages from this wiki into the project proper, they will need to be copied into a protected wiki*.
Join the management/coordination wiki, http://wikidia.wikispaces.com This will become essential for all contributors, for coordination, and for control of possible abuse. Just scroll down to find the 'Join' control.
Join any of the already created protected content wikis in the project, linked to by http://wikids.wikispaces.com/ (scroll down to find the 'join' control) and get improving or producing more content, or discussing pages.
Create your own compatible protected wikis and integrate them into the project. (You will need to join any wikis that could usefully to link to yours, or contact members of those wikis, and notify us through the http://wikidia.wikispaces.com.)

Registration

In order to use this Web site, you must first complete the registration form. During registration you are required to provide us your name and email address. We use this information to contact you about the services on our site.

Tangient LLC is the sole owner of the registration information collected on Wikispaces.com.

when  you   register ,you  can  see:

• Wiki Home
• Projects
• Recent Changes
• Pages and Files
• MembersManage Wiki

 All Pages

 Navigation Options

edit navigation

Welcome to Your New Wiki!

Getting Started

• Click on the edit button above to put your own content on this page.
• To invite new members, click on Manage Wiki and Invite People.
• To change your wiki's colors or theme, click on Manage Wiki and Look and Feel.
• To set who can view and edit your wiki, click on Manage Wiki and Permissions.

Need Help?

• Click on the help link above to learn more about how to use your wiki.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Eliminates Emails	Only one person can edit a page at a time. However people can edit different pages at the same time.
Editing is very similar to Word	Free accounts can be seen by anyone
View recent changes and revert to an earlier version
If you forget to save-a draft is automatically saved.
Educators can ask for ad free sites.
Discussion tab can be used to have multiple discussions.

DOKUWIKI

                                                                   DOKUWIKI



DokuWiki is a standards compliant, simple to use Wiki, mainly aimed at creating documentation of any kind. It is targeted at developer teams, workgroups and small companies. It has a simple but powerful syntaxwhich makes sure the datafiles remain readable outside the Wiki and eases the creation of structured texts. All data is stored in plain text files – no database is required.DokuWiki is a simple to use Wiki aimed at the documentation needs of a small company. It works on plain text files and thus needs no database. It has a simple but powerful syntax which makes sure the datafiles remain readable outside the Wiki.
History

DokuWiki was created by Andreas Gohr in June 2004. In July the first official release was published on Freshmeat. A big step in the development was the re-design of the parser and the renderer in January 2005. The new design was a big performance improvement and made DokuWiki usable for bigger documentation projects. It also prepared DokuWiki for an introduction of a generic plugin interface which simplified the development and maintenance of add-ons. A push of the level of awareness was the introduction of DokuWiki in the Linux distributions Debian in April and Gentoo Linuxin July 2005 . Since 2005, it has achieved significant usage.

Main features

Revision control 

DokuWiki stores all versions of each wiki page, allowing the user to compare the current version with any older version. The difference engine is the same as the one used in MediaWiki. Parallel editing of one page by multiple users is prevented by a locking mechanism.

Access control 

Access control can be handled by a user manager which allows users and groups of users to be defined, and an access control list where an admin user can define permissions on page and namespace level, giving it much better access control than Mediawiki.

Plugins 

DokuWiki has a generic plugin interface which simplifies the process of writing and maintaining plugins. There are ~1000 plugins available. These can be easily integrated and managed by an admin user with the help of the plugin manager.

Templates 

The appearance of the wiki can be defined by a template. There are various templates  provided by the development community.

Internationalization and localization 

DokuWiki supports Unicode (UTF-8), so languages such as Chinese, Thai, and Hebrew can be displayed. DokuWiki can be configured in about 40 languages.

Caching 

DokuWiki stores the rendered output of parsed wiki pages to reduce server load.

Full text search 

DokuWiki has an integrated indexed search with which a user can search for keywords on the wiki.

More complete documentation of the above, as well as other features can be found on the feature list on the official web site.

BitNami DokuWiki provides all-in-one free native installers, virtual machines and Amazon Cloud Images that simplify the DokuWiki installation and hosting. The stacks include a pre-configured version of DokuWiki and all of its required dependencies.

DokuWiki is a standards compliant, simple to use wiki mainly aimed at creating documentation of any kind. It is targeted at developer teams, workgroups, and small companies. It has a simple but powerful syntax which makes sure the datafiles remain readable outside the wiki and eases the creation of structured texts. All data is stored in plain text files; no database is required.

DokuWiki

DokuWiki is a system that has been developed specifically for the writing of documentation. It has no DocBook support though, so this has to be added manually. The same goes for almost all wiki systems however, so this is hardly a disadvantage. DokuWiki has the added advantage of being a system that has a lot of active users and it is updated reasonably often.

DokuWiki is largely written in PHP. The source code is reasonably clean and it has a simple and clear design. This should make extending DokuWiki quite easy. It has also the possibility to use plugins to add certain features. It won't be possible though to make DokuWiki support DocBook by only writing a plugin, because this requires some fundamental changes.

The pros and cons of DokuWiki

Pros	Cons
Good code quality Supports plugins Relatively easy to add DocBook support 'Proven' system	No support for DocBook

What  can  we  do ?

• Revision control 
• Access control 
• Plugins 
• Templates 
• Internationalization and localization 
• Caching 
• Full text search 

Registration

If the wiki admin didn't disable it, people can register themselves at the wiki. To do so just click on “Login” and follow the “Register” link below to the login form.

Enter your Userdata and hit register, depending on how the wiki is configured you will either get an auto-generated password by mail (default) or you are allowed to supply your own password in the register form.

If register is disabled in the disableactions config option, only the administrator(s) can add users. They can find an “Add new user” link in the “Admin” screen.

You can update your registration information at any time. Simply login and click on “Update Profile”.

Unregister / Delete User

Admins can delete users through the User Manager. But users cannot delete themselves.

https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki

https://forum.dokuwiki.org/forum

MEDIA WIKI

MediaWiki is free server-based software which is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It's designed to be run on a large server farm for a website that gets millions of hits per day. MediaWiki is an extremely powerful, scalable software and a feature-rich wiki implementation, that uses PHP to process and display data stored in a database, such as MySQL. MediaWiki is a free software open source wiki package written in PHP, originally for use on Wikipedia. It is now also used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation
Pages use MediaWiki's wikitext format, so that users without knowledge of XHTML or CSS can edit them easily.
When a user submits an edit to a page, MediaWiki writes it to the database, but without deleting the previous versions of the page, thus allowing easy reverts in case of vandalism or spamming. MediaWiki can manage image and multimedia files, too, which are stored in the filesystem. For large wikis with lots of users, MediaWiki supports caching and can be easily coupled with Squid proxy server software.

What MediaWiki is...

MediaWiki is wiki software.
MediaWiki is server software.
MediaWiki is geared towards the needs of the Wikimedia Foundation.
MediaWiki is free software.

Some things MediaWiki doesn't do so well...

•    Because MediaWiki was designed for open-content, it is often not suitable for situations where you want to restrict access to part of the wiki.
•    MediaWiki has been designed to serve very high-traffic websites such as Wikipedia. It has been optimised for this use and may not be so suitable for smaller sites, where disk space or memory are bigger restrictions than bandwidth.
•    MediaWiki is not normally a suitable replacement for dedicated forum/blogging software if that is what you are after.
In the above cases there may be other wiki software (or non-wiki software) which better serves your needs.
Whether you should use MediaWiki for your own wiki depends on what kind of website you want to run with it. Wikipedia's software has many useful features that grew out of the needs of the users and the ideas of the developers -- but features also mean complexity.

Licence

MediaWiki is free software licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License. Because MediaWiki is licensed free of charge, there is no warranty, to the extent permitted by applicable law. Read the full text of the GNU GPL version 2 for details.

System Requirements

MediaWiki requires PHP 5.3.2+ and either MySQL 5.0.2+, PostgreSQL, or SQLite. For more information, please read the system requirements andcompatibility.
Note: To get a suitable version of PHP on CentOS 5.6, install the php53 package instead of php.
To MediaWiki 1.18.x users: Support of this branch will be discontinued at the end of November 2012. Please prepare to update to a newer version of MediaWiki:
•    MediaWiki 1.20.0 (download)
•    MediaWiki 1.19.2 (download)

Twitter/Facebook/Identi.ca
We have an official Twitter account.
•    @MediaWikiOrg
And Facebook page also.
•    MediaWiki
To hear about upcoming events and meetings, subscribe to our meetings account.
•    @MediaWikiMeet (Twitter)
•    @MediaWikiMeet (Identi.ca)
Blog
The Wikimedia Blog has a tech section specifically for news and information from the Wikimedia Foundation’s Technology department (link - RSS feed).
Newsletter
English Wikipedia's Signpost has a regular technology report with content related to activity within Wikimedia Foundation’s Technology department.
Websites
•    Wikimedia's Meta-Wiki was formerly where documents were managed and proposals were discussed before this site was started. There is still a lot of content there that has yet to be moved.
•    MediaZilla is where feature requests and bugs may be reported or browsed.

Wiki Review

        The wetpaintcentral.com is an avarage site on the terms of otlook as it doesn't look so attracting. But that's not the same with it contents because it will help the students and teachers in so many ways. For example, it has a bar that includes Home, Discussion, Photo, Video, News, Update and Member part on top of the site. So once you’re signed in the site for free, you can start using these advantages. The second thing that attracts my attention at the first sight is “easy edit” option because we can change what we have wrotten on our post anytime, anyplace in the way we want it to be. And maybe the most distinctive feature of this wiki from any other wiki is that it allows you to choose who can edit pages. Everyone, even anonymously; anyone who joins our site; or only the writers can have this authority. But this is not the situation in wikispaces.com or pbworks.com. Also, we can adjust the style for our site among a lot of themes. And yet even this feature is so old-fashioned and ordinary. I prefer the wikispaces on these subjects because it has caught up with the new technological improvements from all the perspectives. Anyway, let me go on with wetpaintcentral.com. At the below part of the site, there are some threads for the page and we can also see the information about it like the author, thread subject, replies and last post date. The authors can add some attachments that they have benefited. But not all the attachments are allowed to be seen at the first sight so as to block the mess of the page, so the limited number is only five attachments, and yet you can see all of them in one click. We can even vote the thread whether it is valuable or not. All we have to do is to answer the question of Ye sor No. Also, we can share the thread on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, StumbleUpon etc. Then I’m attracted to the left side of the wiki. Here is the place where we put our pages in headlines. When we click them the subheads appear. For example, I open the Higher-Ed Wikis on the site I'm using and what meets me is Teaching Tips for College Profs, Math Ed and Technological & Virtual Teams. Even these subheads have many other subheads. So it’s just like a big library - a technological library. That's all...

WE ARE THE ALPHABET

During the process of our first school experiences, we firstly started to learn the smallest unit of the language : letters. At the beginning, it was  a little bit difficult to learn how to pronounce. However, we were able to learn how to pronounce after a while. Since then, we have kept saying. :)

A Brandnew World

                Blog is a virtual extension of the classroom which gives a chance to the students or the teachers to reflect on their thoughts and feelings easily, freely and comfortably more than ever. They can communicate between each other and learn many things from each other. It’s an area where everybody, even from the farthest ends of the earth, can reach and comment. They can ask questions, they can share their own opinions, they can say what they like etc.

                First of all, let’s start with the first time when we open our blogs. The pages are easily created, and new data is entered through a simple form and then submitted. Then we can filter the contents for many entries like date, author, category, and many other things. Also, it is not necessary for a blog to just have one administrator. You can invite and add many other authors to your blog with the same skills. You can link and inter-link in your blog, so it’s like a digital portfolio of students’ assignments and achievements. The participants can demonstrate critical thinking, take creative risks and make sophisticated use of language and design elements. The most common approaches are, I think, the personal academic perspective and the pedagogical perspective. The first one is of reflection on teaching experiences among the teachers, the resources and methods that are used, rambling regarding Professional challenges and also some tips for other academics, ilustration of specific technology-related tips. The latter is of comments based on student responses, a collaborative space for students as reviewers, an online gallery for review of works, writings etc, the encouragement of the teachers and development of a student portfolio.

                The biggest feature of blogging is that what you have last published is always in the first page. So someone can easily see the updated posts. Also, you can add many features and gadgets like popular topics which let you show the most followed articless except the other posts; a sharing link which let you share the article in facebook, twitter and etc; the subscribing button which let others subscribe to your blog and know right away when you publish a new article; a feed area which lets you show the blogs that you have subscribed; a search button which lets you find any article with the keywords; a blog archive which has all the posts inside it; a following button which lets you follow the blog throgh e-mail address; a video bar which let the visitors play the video which you have put; a poll which you can evaluate your visitors’ opinions; a link list which shows your favorite sites, blogs or web pages…

All in all, we should evgrave it in our mind that today blogs are not just for delivering the concent to the students. It’s a collaborative media which everybody can interact and improve their vision. So we can accept it as an online journal with one or many contributors

Refferences:
Blogs In Education by Scott Huette
The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS In Education by Duffy, Peter and Bruns
Exploring The Use of Blogs by Jeremy B. Williams

Blogs Are The New Platforms For The Learners

BLOGS   ARE   THE  NEW  PLATFORMS   FOR  THE LEARNERS 

Blogs  are  related to  communication   dynamics .In blogs,all information put in order in the hierarchical  basis  ,bound  within the  subject  and  the organisation .A blog should be distributed ,aggreated ,open and  independent.Through the use  of blogs ,it is suggested that,teachers and the  students are  becoming empowered  ,motivated ,creative  and   reflective and connected  practitioners in new  knowledge environments .

There is a  balance  between teachers and  learners to  share their ideas on the blogs .A blog could  be a  brief  review of  some educational topic .The  different   types  of blog are  used  in  terms  of  their  communication   dynamics  and  following impact upon teachers ,students and pedagogy .

Blogs  have been much more active since  last  ten  years and involved the  regular  posting  of basic  items in reverse  chronological  order .In  a blog ,there is  a   visual  representation ,detail  preparation and  almost perfectly presentation ,incorporating other  such  features  as links  ,comments ,permanent  links ,blogrolls  and  discussions about  the nature  of blogs and  their  potential use .Although  these  features are  extremely important  aspects of  what  makes  up   a  blog,the  most  important developments  int his  area  have had little to  do  with  visual form .

Blog   technologies  are able  to simply represent  themselves online and  as   an  abbreviation  of  RDF Site Summary    or  Really  Simple Syndication .RSS  allows  the  all users  to  subscribeto  a  web  page and  receive complete  or  summarised new   content  .RSS is  a big  opportunity  for  the introduction  of  an  entirely  new mode  of  communication  and  mutual  interaction  .Blogs  have  been used  in educational settings in a  number  of different  roles that  have  both  extended upon in some  instances   replaced existing online   communication  tools .

Communication  dynamics  between  blogs  and  others   forms  on online  communication   tools  could  make   easier  to learn  new  things  .The  knowledge    can be  learned   by  sharing .Though   almost  all    identifiable  studies   of the use  of   blogs  in education have been  relatively  positive,there  have  been  significant areas  in which no particular  difference   or   negative outcomes  have been  recorded  .Particularly  ,teachers  and  the  learners  have  struggled with  participation  and  getting  learners  to extend  themselves  in  the  environment ,handling  collaborative   tasks  using  blogs .Actually  , the blogs existed  much more   in the  form  communication  platform  where  they  use  their  collaborative  natura .

Generally  ,users  visit the  blogs regularly to  communicate   and  share  their  own  ideas.While  the  resulting  feedback  claimed satisfaction and  no  objection to  the  use  of   the  blogs,almost there  was any  to  indicate  any important  shift  in student perception and  activity  in the  learning environments.

The other  aim  of  the  blogs  is  to  determine  a  topic ,understanding from one’s  perspective  ,considering  what they  think ,and enchancing  their  learning  process.The  development  of  knowledge  through  learning  to  self-publish  and  comment  on postings that  adhere  to  the  norms  of  behaviour in the  chosen  communication  network  in which   the  exact  aim is  to  ecpect   to enchance  the learners’ reflective  ,meta-cognitive  and  written  skills also management  of  their learning.

 

Refrences :

Cooper, C., & Boddington, L. (2005). Assessment by blog: Ethical case studies assessment for an

undergraduate business management class. Blogtalk downunder conference 2005. Retrieved June 22,

2005

Garrison, R., & Anderson, T. (2003). E-learning in the 21st century: A framework for research and practice.

London: Routledge

MacColl, I., Morrison, A., Muhlberger, R., Simpson, M., & Viller, S. (2005). Reflections on reflection:

Blogging in undergraduate design studios. Blogtalk downunder conference 2005. Retrieved June 22,

2005

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Boston: Harvard University Press.

Boud, D. (2001). Using journal writing to enhance reflective practice. In L. M. English & M. A.Gillen (Eds.),

Promoting journal writing in adult education. New Directions in Adult and Continuing Education

(No. 90, pp. 9.18). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

The Importance of Educational Blog

       Blog is one of the platforms where you can reach the updated information aobut not only language but also a life. It presents many facilities  for all people. That is to say, a young learner or an adult learner can easily get an appropriate answer to his or her question in their mind about language they try to learn or something they try to sort out.
       On the other hand, educational  blog is one of the types of blog in which you can find information about the language,the structure of language and how to learn or acquire the language input. It depends on the principle of 'i+1',and aims to use the language effectively,which is one of our objectives. When you enter into the blog,you will find any kind of knowledge according to all levels. With your contributions, we are going to develop the content of the blog all together.
      One of the facilities an educational blog presents is to help the students create something easily. So the student can construct a brigde between the new input and what s/he already knows,and create new ideas, which makes the knowledge permanent for the student. As everboydy who logs in the educational blog has an opportunity to comment on the posted text,to share his or her own opinion and to correct the mistake s/he sees, we can say that providing a personel writing space is one of the best characteristics that an educational blog displays.
      Furthermore,this promotes critical thinking. After evaluating the posted materials, the persosn can gain new perspectives as a consequence of different pointviews. This aslo means that people can interact with each other on a blog so that they can change their opinions.
     For  the teacher, an educational blog provides a lot of experiences. Both his or her students and his/her colleqiues can see what the teacher misses,and can add something to improve. So an educational blog applicable for information exchange as both sides have a chance to comment.
As an another perspective, you can find what you try to reach among the posted materials according to calendar. You can also reach these in the section of archive. By reaching the resources in the blog, you can give your project a shape. To complete your assingments, you can use the updated input in this blog. At the same tame, you can follow the updated news on other blog. Additionaly you can follow this blog on other social networks like twitter,facebook,etc.
    According to Gardner’s Multi-intellegence theory , all learners have different kinds of learning like visual,mathematical,linguistic,etc. Thanks to the educational blog,you can improve the kind of intellengence you already have,and you can take it a step further,or you can gain a new style of learning. On the other hand,the students can learn how to criticise a literal text when the teacher encourages his or her reactions,reflections by making comments on their blog.
   An educational blog presents a colloborative,communicative and also secured environment for the student to show and express himself or herself. Thanks to this,even a shy student can be more active by feeling responsible for something. So an educational blog is an environment in which the people feel relaxed,and act freely while communicating, which is the most important principle in language teaching and learning process.


Reference:

 Duffy, Peter and Bruns, Axel (2006) The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. In Proceedings Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, pages pp. 31-38, Brisbane.

Blogs For Education?

Blogs have been used in educational settings in a number of different ways and have many positive effects for learning and teaching.

Blogs , espcially , educational blogs “E- blogs” were created for students and teachers alike and are growing in popularity and they provide many advantages not only for students but also for teachers. Educational blogs are used to allow educators to interact with students from any location.

Shared ideas by teachers through blogs is a promising way to communicate teaching opinions and allows multicultural teaching methods to be disseminated. The blogs that tell the educator how to use technology within the classroom are informative as many teachers would have no idea about such teaching methods. Some of the advantages of this kind of blogs are :

• Openly discuss educational issues, particularly related to learning technology

• Allow individual bloggers the opportunity to share their posts with an audience  beyond their own blog

• Share discoveries, resources, accomplishments, excitement and areas of interest

• Present ideas for integration of learning technology into the curriculum

• Provide technical assistance to other teachers and trainee practitioners

• Promote Critical and analytical thinking

• Promote Creative, Intuitive and Associational thinking

• Promote Analogical thinking

• Potential for increased access and exposure to quality information

• Combination of solitary and social interaction.

In conclusion, we live in a world that almost nothing can be done without using computer and blogs are one of the most important tools in education for both students and teachers

References :

http://tep.uoregon.edu/shared/blogswikispodcasts/BlogsInEducation.pdf

http://ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet20/williams.html

http://cms.ascilite.org.au/conferences/brisbane05/blogs/proceedings/22_Farmer.pdf

            http://www.scis.ulster.ac.uk/~kevin/Elixir-blogs.pdf