Blogs v. Wikis v. Web Page

Hello everyone,
A colleague of mine came to me today with a question as to whether or not a blog, a wiki, or a web page would be best for her high school juniors to work with. She is the ELA teacher in an American Studies class and is trying to figure out which one would be best for students who have study different 20th century eras and create some way to show what they have learned. Any thoughts? Thanks. Dan

Tags: american, arts, blogging, ela, english, history, language, pages, web, wiki

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Permalink Reply by Colleen Young on December 7, 2010 at 11:07am

I totally agree Tracey. I too use Wikispaces. It is easy to use and students can very quickly create impressive looking pages.

I have found that sense of ownership really important to my students.

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Permalink Reply by Catherine Cabiness on June 17, 2011 at 12:38pm

I use a wiki with my students because they are able to collaborate on the same wiki page. Blogs are good for threaded discussions, but a wiki allows for students to truly interact with each other. A wiki also allows for threaded discussions as well. What's nice about a wiki is that each student could have their own wiki page to add text, graphics, videos, etc. to demonstrate what they've learned but it can all be located within the same class wiki. It's an easier way for students to see each other's work as opposed to having separate urls for blogs.

But if she's really ambitious, she can open the final product to be anything...wiki, blog, podcast, glog... =) I think letting students choose the medium by which to demonstrate what they've learned gives them the freedom to show their creativity...something that is often left out of the curriculum in this day and age of standardized testing.

Catherine

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Permalink Reply by Michael Mitchell on June 19, 2011 at 7:01am

As with others here, I've used them all. No need to repeat comments, but wikis are more collaborative, blogs are informational in scope (Blogger), almost like a newsletter with reply options, web pages get a little more involved with plenty of front-loaded effort. Our school board has a pilot project under-way, slowing introducing Wordpress pages to teachers. The sites are internal, thus, there is some control and monitoring with I-T. I guess I was a rebel a few years ago when I was using Wikispaces and Blogger in my class. Didn't go over well! They were external and the board didn't like the lack of control. As a new administrator, I'll be pushing (nudging?) my staff toward the use of the Wordpress sites in the fall, see where it takes us. Also, I'd like to investigate the use of Twitter by Intermediate students.

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Permalink Reply by Ray Wilkinson on January 23, 2012 at 7:57pm

An interesting question, and many interesting points of view in the replys.

I began with a Blog for my personal site, reasons being a Blog is free and easy to create.

For students I use a Blog for these reasons, plus they can Comment to each other.

Yet for my own personal website I have changed to a web page, because it has a more professional look.

http://www.bangkokenglishcourse.com/

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Permalink Reply by Bjorn Holdt on January 24, 2012 at 6:22am

All three are website, so all would be applicable here. You can't really go wrong on the choice.

I would have to agree with Amy here though, that blogs might be the most beneficial as they can get feedback from others more easily.

Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Ruchita Parat on February 1, 2012 at 11:39pm

I think only one is enough ,because you donot have so much time to manage them all.I think web page is best...

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Permalink Reply by Thomas Nixon on February 15, 2012 at 1:20pm

I would prefer a blog in this situation beause each student can have there own blog, plus respond to their classmate's blogs. Wiki's are nice but they generally require some upkeep and may not be as simple for students to post and respond.