Blog v Wiki

I have been reading blogs for years, and started my own blog earlier this year. Blogs can be thought of as personalized web pages where the owner of the web page shares and writes about anything they want to. I've been introduced to the concept of wikis through this class, and have come to understand them as collaborative web pages where anyone - as long as they're allowed - can post and edit content. People have taken advantage of wikis, and posted false information, which led to Wikipedia limiting changes on articles on people. Wikipedia to Limit Changes to Articles on People, published in The New York Times, mentioned "Under the current system, it is not difficult to insert false information into a Wikipedia entry, at least for a short time".

Convergence is extremely important as it allows the knowledge of a group to be greater than the sum of its parts. Even though convergence and collaboration are terms we might associate with wikis more so than blogs, if utilized appropriately, blogs can be equally as effective. Brooklyn Blog Helps Leads to Drug Raid, published in The New York Times talks about how blogging by neighbors in a Brooklyn neighborhood led to the busting of crackhouses. The following is an excerpt from the article: "Months later, the bloggers are celebrating, days after the police raided the two neighboring homes in question, 346 and 348 93rd Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues, and arrested five people, including three brothers who lived there".

One way I think wikis can be utilized effectively by students is for review sheets. For example, a wiki can be created by a professor for each class section, and students can edit and structure content for the benefit of everyone in the class.

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