New Literacy: Blogs, Wikis, and Nings! Oh My!

Blogging is not what I usually think of when I think 'new.' It has been around since I was in high school. I even kept a few of my own for a time. According to Richard T. Vacca, Jo Anne Vacca, and Maryann Mraz's Content Area Reading eleventhedition, 'Teachers are now assigning students to read preselected blogs related to class projects, make comments on the blogs, and then report back to the class.” This use of blogging is something that is akin to the making a website” option of the early 2000s where students could make a website as a way of doing a presentation or a reading summary. Blogs end up being a bit more formal than the discussion board posting but less formal than a full presentation. The blog format might even produce results better than a paper. The use of pictures in a blog can ease the amount of writing by allowing students to post a picture rather than describe something. Also, with an image embedded right next to the picture, students can write about an image without having to deal with multiple windows. Vacca, Vacca, and Mraz also bring up the ability to create sites that require passwords and allow the teacher to monitor the content. This allows a teacher to grade whenever he or she likes and make sure that criticism is fair and useful. (p. 47-51)

Something I'm less knowledgeable about are Wikis and their educational counterpart Nings. I use them all the time, but I've never had to edit one or even create one. In a class I'm observing, the teacher used them for short story presentations. The students were required to have a story summary, an author bio, a vocabulary list, and a review of the website. A few pictures were required, but I think more could have been added to make the assignment more interesting. This was combined with a presentation on the short story for the class since the class read all the stories prior. It worked well for about half the class. Unfortunately, the other half just read their wiki to the class. This combination was an interesting idea, but it seems that a twine presentation or basic Powerpoint presentation uploaded to a class site might have had similar usefulness.

I like the idea of creating a Wiki for other students in the class to use, but it might be better to use a different tact. The original idea for wikis are as a user updated encyclopedia. So, rather than just have the original students make and present. Why not have the other students propose additions. Despite my limited knowledge I believe that Wikis can be set to hold changes for review. Thus, the students could create their Wiki, then the class could use them for a quickwrite and find and propose changes to certain information. This brings in the concept of peer revision, but in more of a 21st century context. Students can also read what they find useful, and it prevents students from not listening during a presentation. This is something I'll have to look more into for my future class presentations.