Week No. 5: Web 2.0.Wikis

In our ICTs in ELT , our facilitator, Professor Evelyn Izquierdo, explained us what a Wiki is and we were assigned a task that consists of developing our personal wiki projects.Mine has to do with the integration of my teaching activities at Universidad Nacional Experimental Simón Rodríguez with blogging as an alternative strategy to make the teaching-learning process more effective, participative, cooperative and interesting.In addition, I would like to present the following important information related to wiki websites.

A wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites, for personal note taking, in corporate intranets, and in knowledge management systems.

Ward Cunningham, who was the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work. "Wiki" is a Hawaiian word for "fast".

Wikis are one of many Web 2.0 components that can be used to enhance the learning process. A
wiki is a web communication and collaboration tool that can be used to engage students in learning with others within a collaborative environment.

Duffy and Bruns (2006) list several possible educational uses of wikis:

• Students can use a wiki to develop research projects, with the wiki serving as ongoing
documentation of their work.

• Students can add summaries of their thoughts from the prescribed readings, building a
collaborative annotated bibliography on a wiki.

• A wiki can be used for publishing course resources like syllabi and handouts, and students
can edit and comment on these directly for all to see.

• Teachers can use wikis as a knowledge base, enabling them to share reflections and
thoughts regarding teaching practices, and allowing for versioning and documentation.

• Wikis can be used to map concepts. They are useful for brainstorming, and editing a
given wiki topic can produce a linked network of resources.

• A wiki can be used as a presentation tool in place of conventional software, and students
are able to directly comment on and revise the presentation content. Parker & Chao61 .

• Wikis are tools for group authoring. Often group members collaborate on a document by
emailing to each member of the group a file that each person edits on their computer, and
some attempt is then made to coordinate the edits so that everyone’s work is equally represented;using a wiki pulls the group members together and enables them to build and
edit the document on a single, central wiki page.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wiki.

http://enijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3po57-072Parker284.pdf

Week No. 4: Web 2.0.Blogging

During this week of our course of ICTs in ELT, our facilitator, Professor Evelyn Izquierdo, taught us the most relevant points related to blogging that can be summarized in the following way:

A blog (a contraction of the term "web log") is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or videos. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. In other words can be conceived as online diaries."Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (Video blogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.

A blog entry typically consists of the following:
Title – main title of the post,
Body – main content of the post,
Comments – comments added by readers
Category (or tags) – category the post is labeled with (optional, multiple categories possible)
Blogroll – other blogs that the blog author reads/affiliates with
Permalink – the URL of the full, individual article
Post Date – date and time the post was published
Trackback – links to other sites that refer to the entry

Like the general blogging community, there are many ways to use blogging in teaching and learning. You can use an existing blog to provide information and insights. They can also help you provide examples to increase the quality of your students' blog entries. Or, you can encourage your students to create a blog for others that reflects these ideas.

In the area of language teaching, Campbell (2003) distinguishes three types of blogs:
- the tutor blog
-the class blog
-the learner blog

References
http://enblog.stevious.com/?p=1039.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog.
http://en.escrapbooking.com/blogging/ti.htm_