The Wisdom of the crowd
Discussion:
The Wisdom of the crowd / weblogs
In terms of having student work take place in public or private spaces,
Some thoughts about weblogs:
- Weblogs may be online journals (text, images, and hyperlinks)
- Dynamic environment that facilitates reflection.
- Strategy to get students motivated; to participate actively in the writing construction and encourage critical thinking
- Allows active learning, get feedback
- Access to a variety of resources and blogging & providing a form of online asynchronous discussion.
- Possibility of customizing blogs by adding images, graphics, videos, pictures and many other features
- Enables connecting and integrating technology to a traditional field of study to form a new method to understand the subject
Issues of ownership or responsibility in weblogs; potential benefits or drawbacks to having people who are not within the classroom space participating or engaging with student material?
- Self-publishing encourages ownership and responsibility on the part of students, who may be more thoughtful (in content and structure) if they know they are writing for a real audience.
- In the video made my Karl Fisch, students seem to be mainly positive about their experience.
- They seem to be at ease in the blogsphere.
- Interconnectivity is certainly an element of their lives not only found on blogs, but also on many other devices.
- I think that when we talk of strangers (or collaborators) having access to their work, we must really decide which audience we are referring to:
- elementary school children
- high school students
- university students
- … should be treated differently.
References:
Blogs and Wikis: Environments for On-line Collaboration
http://cursa.ihmc.us/rid=1131480053328_1801720929_4296/godwin.pdf