Teaching With Blogs and Wikis at UIUC

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Using blogs in course work helps improve students' writing:

"Several years ago when Christian Sandvig, then a new professor of speech
communication, was developing a course called Communication Technology and
Society in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, he wanted to make the
course writing intensive, but was concerned about managing the workload of
grading the work produced by up to 100 students. After reading scholarly studies
on using diaries to enhance writing skills, Sandvig decided to try a high-tech
twist on that tried-and-true tool: blogs."

Nice article by Sharia Forrest of the UIUC News Bureau on "Using Blogs in Course Work Helps Improve Students' Writing."

Christian Sandvig also did a very good brown bag presentation for CITES EdTech last fall where he went into more detail on the value of blogs for teaching; we've posted his presentation online as both text summary and video.

Robert - I'm responding to your initial questions in not quite the linear style as you posed them. When the book Freakonomics by Steven Levitt, one of the best younger economists in the nation, and Stephen Dubner, a writer for the NY Times, came out last spring there was a huge flurry on the blog devoted to the book where the authors would make a post and then a lot of commentary would follow from ordinary citizens who had an interest. In the middle of that discussion Levitt took to task a book that was very hot a year or two earlier year called MoneyBall, and esepcially on the issue of whether the A's general manager Bill Beane really did apply statistical analysis to determine the (comparatively) inexpensive ballplayers who batted in the A's lineup. This generated a huge amount of discussion on the blog. And then later in the summer the A's started to do well....

The idea that the general public can communicate directly with important people who have strong opinions and blogs are the right forum for that is an intoxicating one. But I also think there are a lot of high powered folks who want to have such dialog but when they try it online the people dynamic just doesn't work and it doesn't play out well. So I'd like to see the Freakonomics case repeated a few more times before considering it the rule rather than the exception.

I've built us a wiki where we can play with the technology. 1st assignment: add to my exploration of Some Things We Humans Collaboratively Create. The idea here is to see if we can counteract some of the strangeness we feel when we hear that wikis are collaboratively edited by reminding ourselves of other things humans create in a highly collaborative manner. All you need to do is go to the wiki, click edit page, and join the conversation.

best

Robert

Unike Skype, audioblogger recognizes the touch tones generated by Gizmo Project. I had some fun here with the sound effects built into Gizmo Project.

Gizmo Project, also unlike Skype, uses the open-source SIP protocol for VoIP and has a built-in feature for the recording of phone calls (either computer to computer or computer to phone) and so can be easily used to record interviews for podcasts. Here is an interview I recorded with my mother using Gizmo Project computer-to-phone as part of my Wikilanguages project (in Ogg Vorbis format) in which audio examples of all the world's languages and dialects will be provided (being completed in my spare time!).

Gizmo Project software is actually a "soft phone" connected to the SIPphone network and peer networks, including the phone systems used at UCSD, Indiana University and a number of other universities. So using Gizmo Project, one can call any of these SIPphone networks for free. I wonder when UIUC will get with it and dump its ancient POTS system for its telephone communication. :)

--Gary

As I mentioned in the audio, I was unable to use Skype for my audio blog entry as thea audioblogger attendant did not hear the touch tones I produced with Skype to login and provide my PIN. I will have to try with Gizmo Project to see if that works. These serivces cost only about 2 cents/minute for long distance computer-to-phone calls to much of the world (computer to computer is free).

This is also an easy way to create an MP3 file that could be used for other purposes as well (limit is 5 minutes), either linking to the file on the blog or downloading the entire and putting it somewhere else. One could even to a quick 5-minute or less interview on the phone with someone as a conference call including the audioblogger number. Gizmo Project provides a free conference call feature (even going out to regular POTS numbers) that could be used for this. But I have to see first if audioblogger will recogize the tones that Gizmo Project produces.

All this new tech developments open up all kinds of completely new possibilties for education and communication--I find it actually dizzying at times!

--Gary

Dear Interested Campus Blogger and Wikiite!

You are one of a large number of campus faculty and technology supporters (42 total) that attended one of the CITES EdTech Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasting brownbags and indicated interest in joining a working group on the topic. This email list will support our discussion concerning use of blogs and wikis. We have also set up a blog and wiki for posting tips and examples and general experimentation.

You will need to respond to a 2nd email (sent shortly) which will invite you to become a contributing member of our new blog:

Teaching With Blogs and Wikis at UIUC
http://guava.cites.uiuc.edu/r-baird/blogsnwikis/

We also have a wiki at:

http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/teaching_with_wikis_at_uiuc

Anyone can post at our wiki, and I've already added our first assignment (which is hopefully fun and enlightening): Add to our exploration of "Some Things We Humans Collaboratively Create." The idea here is to see if we can counteract some of the strangeness we feel when we hear that wikis are collaboratively edited by reminding ourselves of other things humans create in a highly collaborative manner. All you need to do is go to the wiki, click edit page, and contribute to our collective response.

About this "working group," CITES EdTech wants to bring together campus faculty, technical staff, and pedagogy and media specialists through a few informal working groups that will share ideas and questions in an online forum (blog, wiki, listserv,), meet occassionally for sharing and show n tell sessions, and serve as a support network for those instructors actively engaged in using these technologies in their courses and research.

A subsequent email will explain how you can join our blog (a standard Blogger blog that should be easy to join).

Once you join the blog, please post a single entry that responds briefly to these questions:

1. What, if any, experience do you have with blogs and wikis as a consumer?

2. What, if any, experience do you have with blogs and wikis as a teacher or technical support staff?

3. Imagine you are going to pilot the use of a blog or wiki in a spring 2006 semseter course on this campus (either your own or for another teacher) what might you try? Offer some discipline and/or course specific tasks or objectives that you might hope to facilitate?

You can copy and paste the 3 questions above into your first blog post when you respond to the questions. We assume that some of you already use Blogger, but also want to introduce this easy and free tool to those that haven't used it before. Additionally, we believe that teachers and students can easily use Blogger for course work, collaboration, and for course assignments. So, we are kind of testing the feasibility of Blogger as an informal campus teaching and learning tool.

best

Robert Baird
Doug Mills
CITES EdTech