Blogs and Wikis in Education

Blogs, Wikis and other social software tools will have a tremendous impact on education. Here is a nice article that talks about it.

e-learning 2.0 (as coined by Stephen Downes) takes a ‘small pieces, loosely joined’ approach that combines the use of discrete but complementary tools and web services – such as blogs, wikis, and other social software – to support the creation of ad-hoc learning communities.

Almost two years ago, I saw this happen at CSUMB (Cal State University at Monterrey Bay). Valerie Landau used the Wiki from OpenCourse to share the knowledge about their study of Doug Engelbart. They invited guest speakers (I happened to give a few talks) and had the students blog about what they learned.

We even setup a wiki for parents and teachers to discuss and share knowledge at a school in Los Altos, California. So there is co-evolution happening.

  • Blogs and Wikis become popular
  • Students/Teachers use them for various learning and collaborative activities
  • As usage increases, the tools get better (easier, more interactive)
  • Better tools increase usage to more educational institutions

Links:

e-learning 2.0 – how Web technologies are shaping education

Study of Engelbart at California State University Monterrey Bay