Building an online presence: Blogs and wikis

(Week 3: Jan 28 - Feb 3)

Moderators: Ayat Tawel (Egypt), Marijana Smolcec (Croatia), &  Svetlana Obenausova (Czech Republic)

Guest presenter: Graham Stanley

Please listen to the audio about this week's activities.

Record audio or upload mp3 >> 

Objectives

Activities

Task 1

• What is your definition of a blog, a wiki, and a Social Network? How are they similar/different? If you would like some ideas, take a look at the suggested readings for this week. Also, there are many videos that would be interesting to explore on our Tutorials page.

• Check others' blogs; here is an example of Steven Anderson's blog.

• Where do you start? Try here: Creating your blogger blog  (image and description tutorial) by Karl Fisch.
• Create your blog and/or wiki. To be able to pay you a visit at your newly born blog/and or wiki, it's very important for you to share the address (es) in the Participants Productions page.
• Create your twitter account and follow the baw2013 in Twitter. Don't forget to tweet using our hashtag #baw2013.
• For more help on how to create a twitter account, blog or a wiki you may also check Tutorials  page.

Task 2

Congratulations and welcome to the blogsphere! Now, explore the different features and try to:

• post some comments on other participants' blogs that you can find in Participants Productions page
• moderate comments
• write your first post and embbed videos or audio recordings you created in week 2
• post pictures or slideshows
• customize the header
• post widgets
• invite people to contribute as collaborators and authors

Task 3

Also, explore our wiki and try to do these changes in our Playground:

• create headlines for the different sections
• create Table of Contents 
• make a word bold
• insert slideshows
• post pictures
• create new pages

Task 4

• Join us for Graham Stanley's presentation " Personal Learning Networks " at Elluminate, on Monday, Jan 28 20:00-21:00 GMT (check local times here)
• Share your reflections on the session in our "Comment Live Sessions" page 

Tools to explore

Here are some tutorials to get you started

Blogger

• How to create a blog
• How to use Blogger
• How to create and edit pages
• How to publish a blog post
• Manage comments on your blog
• Choose who can read and edit your blog

PBworks

• PBworks Introduction
• PBworks Help

Twitter

• Twitter 1
• Twitter 2
• Managing your Twitter accounts with TweetDeck

Suggested readings

• Blogging with students (1): Why get them blogging?

• 7 things you should know about wikis (2005). Educause Learning Initiative, Jul. 2005.

• Alden, Chris (2006). How blogs can make the link. The Guardian, Jan. 2006

• Borau, Kerstin, Ullrich, C., Feng, J. & Shen, R. (2009). Microblogging for Language Learning: Using Twitter to Train Communicative and Cultural Competence. Advances in Web Based Learning - ICWL 2009 

• Campbell, Aaron. (2003). Weblogs for Use with ESL Classes  

•  Duffy, Peter and Bruns, Axel (2006).The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. Proceedings Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006.

• Klingensmith, Kate (2009). A Teacher's Guide to Twitter. Feb. 2009.

• Nelson, Melanie and Lewis, Karen. How do I start? Blogging Basics.

• Pang, Chiew. Why Twitter for Teachers? (A collection of articles, resources, etc. for teachers and others to see the benefit of social networks such as Twitter).

• Stanley, Graham (2005). Blogging for ELT.

• Using Wikis in ELT. Nov. 2011. (Summary of a very lively discussion held in Twitter by the #ELT Chat group).

• What to do with wikis - an ELT perspective. TEFLGeek. Nov. 2011.
• How (And Why) Teachers Should Blog. 2013.