Hey everyone! I've found this really useful blog/page online and I thought that maybe we can base our discussion about blog vs wiki on it, adding our opinions and ideas
of course.
Wikis Pros and Cons As in this first post im going to focus on Wikis Pros I will say that in relation to this post, I agree (and feel indentified) in the following Pros:
- No large amount of technical knowledge is required: To me, this is a very powerful pro. I have never been particulary good in handing technology so I appreciate how easy is to move around in wikis and to learn how to update it, add images, links, articles, blogs or videos. Apart from being a great tool as a resource for whatever you are interesting in working on, it is great that, both as a organizer and as a visitor, you dont feel distant to the wiki because of its simplicity. It makes you feel confortable and not lost as in many other online webs or tools with similar aims.
- Promotes creativity (goes beyond a plain text essay –includes multimedia); In the past few weeks I have noticed how much we can work on our creativity and that the only way of doing so is having a source which facilitates you and force you (offering a bunch of tools) to keep on researching and editing or uploading as you like (multimedia is really useful to promote creativity). The best option to improve in drawing for example is having a nice bloc, colors and paints to just let your imagination fly. Same with wikis, the more you investigate in the wikis and the options and tools you find the more create you become and the more you want to improve your wiki.
- Sense of ownership: As this is my first wiki, it is the first time I have this sense of ownership. It is true that nowadays you all have the option to own a facebook page, twitter, instagram and so on (years ago, hi5, myspace, etc) in which we can work on the image and presentation we want for others to see or to get other peoples attention, but in those kins of pages all info is personal and you can no go to far with that. In adition to that, in my personal opinion it is not the same sense of ownership, facebook only offers certain kinds of tools and as I said is meant to share personal information, notes, pictures, etc. so there is a pretty standarized format that frames all you can find there. Wikis allowds you too go really far in themes and modifications and knowing that you are one of the organizers and that what it is there is thanks to your work and your classmates give you a really cool sense of ownership and appreciation.
- Online space for brainstorming: Wikis are a perfect "cloud" to keep all we found interesting online and a perfect place to download our ideas and projects and keep it all together to work on them and compare and contrast and moreover to enrich with your colegues comments and opinions and brainstormings.
Next postings:
Part 2: Wikis Cons
Part 3: Blogs Pros (Blogs Pros and Cons)
Part 4: Blogs Cons
I totally agree with the first advantage: nobody needs to be specially good at using technologies to deal with wikis and this is very positive because it encourages people to employ technologies. I also feel that creativity is developed by means of wikis since we have to think how to organise the pages, where we should put some videos or pictures so that the wiki catches the users' attention and so on.
ResponderEliminarExactly. We can put in use what we like to see in others wikis or the things that catch our own attention when we go through any kind of information and we can provide the way its done that we like, in our wiki.
EliminarRossana, I would say your entry is quite good since you have decided to provide us with the main pros and cons of both wikis and blogs (or at least you will). With respect to the wiki's advantages, I feel the first one is very important since I'm not good at technologies (you all saw how hard I tried to log in Skype and you had to help me) and, thus, I consider wikis aren't too difficult to employ them. In addition, as regards your last point, I believe wikis are very useful since people can work in a collaborative way and, also, they may exchange their opinions. In this respect, I think blogs and wikis are similar since in both people can compare their thoughts even if one is the creator (and, therefore, the one who writes the entries) and the rest of people can just leave some comments.
ResponderEliminarThe technological issues are, as I said and you agreed, my MAIN and most powerful pro. If the tools and techonology were too advance or complex less people (counting me) wouldn't dare to open a wiki or students wouldn't work on them, if is too complicate it and it confuses you it is not helpful no matter how good the information provided is. I think your skype example fits perfectly here, you dont use skype because you found it too confusing and you just stop trying, that happens a lot and too a lot of people, thank goodness wikis are not like that. Ps: skype is quit easy after you use it for a while, we will keep on helping you as much as you need :)
EliminarI'm glad you posted this, Rossana. I'm glad because it is a very interesting point regarding blogs and wikis, to be able to compare them, to see what can be improved and what can be changed, how we can use both to complement each system... but I am also gladyou posted this because, as wikis and blogs complement each other, I believe that your publication complements mine, and it is good to see that we can write about the same thing (more or less) without saying the same all the time, but adding new information. That's how a blog has to be, new things about the topic being dealt with, but sometimes, especially when there is more than one author, it is diffiult to do that.
ResponderEliminarYou right Roberto. blog should provide information that complement a theme avoiding repetition and only focusing and new and more extend information, so we can say that we complemented each other regarding this subject, Azucena's post is also different because it is a comparison between Wikispaces and Blogs, here we are just highliting pros and cons of each, not which one is better on what, I'm glad we can do this and provide more informartion keeping it new. By the way, we can discuss a litle bit more about this in my upcoming third post: Blogs Pros ;)
EliminarRossana, I really look forward to seeing the rest of your entry :)
ResponderEliminarAzu thanks for the reminder! I'm sorry that it took me so long but second post: Wikis cons is coming soon! very soon!
EliminarRossana!
EliminarI have seen that your are creating several entries to explain the blogs' and wikis' advantages and disadvantages. I thought you were going to write everything in just one entry in order to have all the information easily. In addition, I believe it would be better if you just go on developing this entry and, therefore, we can discuss all the advantages and drawbacks here. Indeed, I feel it's better in this way since I think one of the most interesting issues is contrasting their pros and cons at the same time. So, if you create an entry for each of them, we may find it difficult to choose in which entry we would like to comment, i.e. if I want to tell that wikis has some disadvantages but, personally speaking, I feel there are more advantages, where should I write my opinion? In the entry of wiki's cons or in the one in which you explained the pros? :S:S
So, I think it would be better if you wrote everything in an entry. Thus, if you feel it's too long, you could choose the most useful and significant aspects you would like to write about in the entry.
What do you think?
Hey guys! I'm really happy you enjoyed it and we are able to discuss about this here. If there are any other pros that you find interesting or you agree with in the web provided by the link, you are more than welcome to mention it so we can discuss about it, I just chose a few that I found myself more related to.
ResponderEliminar