Wikis And Blogs

Wikis and Blogs The Social life of the Document

Today’s presentation • Introduction of Wikis • Introduction of Blogs • The Social life of the Document and how this apply to Wikis and Blogs

Introduction on Wikis

What is a Wiki? • A wiki is a website that uses wiki software, allowing the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked Web pages, using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get") text editor, within the browser; • WikiWikiWeb was the first site to be called a wiki and it was developed by Ward Cunningham in 1994 to facilitate online collaboration about programming and design best practices .

• Evolved by the early 2000’s into a way to facilitate all kinds of online collaboration. • Wiki-Wiki is the name of the bus line in the Honolulu International Airport (is a Hawaiian word for "fast“). • A wiki software is a type of collaborative software program that typically allows web pages to be created and collaboratively edited using a common web browser.

• Websites running such programs are themselves referred to as wikis. • A wiki system is usually an application server that runs on one or more web servers. The content is stored in a file system, and changes to the content are stored in a relational database management system. • Alternatively, personal wikis run as a standalone application on a single computer.

How does it work • Users can edit any page or create new pages within the wiki Web site, using only a web browser; • The structure and formatting of wiki pages are specified with a simplified markup language, sometimes known as “wikitext” which can vary greatly among wiki implementations; • Links are created using specific syntax (link pattern)

Wiki Adoption in Higher Education • Why use wikis in higher education? • • • • • • • •

Participatory Progressive knowledge building Collaborative Encourages student-faculty interaction No hierarchy Web-based – anytime, any place access Software is incredibly easy to use Follow the evolution of thoughts and ideas

Other usage of Wikis • Businesses use wikis for document management (project documentation, internal documentation; that can mean a workgroup, a department, or even the whole company)

• Library technical staff use the collaborative publishing software for documenting their Internal processes and procedures;

Wikipedia • – “A multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia written collaboratively by volunteers …(with) editions in over 180 languages. According to Hitwise, an online measurement company, Wikipedia is the most popular reference site on the Internet.” • Grew rapidly due to its publicly editable content (Anyone with an internet connection, anytime, without even having to login)

http://www.wikipedia.org/

• Some of its success can be attributed to the guiding editorial policy “neutral point of view”

• Wikipedia and Wikis are usually open to anyone, and “if anyone can edit my text, anyone can ruin my text” (not so, since changes are logged, authors are notified, pages are easily restored – no challenge to hackers). • It is typical in a wiki to create links to pages that do not yet exist, as a way to invite others to share what they know about a subject new to the wiki.

Wikipedia Community • Goals and Identity • Novices – Editing what they know • Experts – Building the Wikipedia • Transformation of Tools Use • Novices – How the interface helps • Wikipediants – How the interface helps • Transformed Perceptions of Community, Rules, and Division of Labor • Novices – Community? What Community? • Wikipediants – Members of the Tribe

Introduction on Blogs

What is a Blog & Blogging • A blog (weblog) is a website for which an individual or a group, frequently generates text, photographs, video, audio files, and/or links, typically (but not always) on a daily basis. The term is a shortened form of weblog. • Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts”, “posts”, or “entries”. The person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”.

• Blogging as we see it today began around 1997, with Dave Winer’s Scripting News, an online record of Winer’s reflections on a wide range of topics;

• Blogs vary widely in nature and content; we can categorize them in three primary types: • Individually authored personal journals • “filters” – they select an provide commentary on information from other websites; • “knowledge logs”

The Blogosphere • “Blogosphere is the collective term encompassing all blogs as a community or social network. Many weblogs are densely interconnected; bloggers read others’ blogs, link to them, reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each others’ blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogosphere

Blogs – The Basics • Blogs are web pages • Read in reverse chronological order – the most recent postings are read first • A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic • Give the ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format • Continue to increase in popularity - a new blog is created every second • There is limited interactivity in blogging

• Popular in part because of the simple software used to create them • simple to create • simple to update • neatly organized • free! • Media used with blogs • Most blogs are text-based • There also are photo blogs, audio blogs (podcasts), and video blogs (vodcasts)

• Privacy

Why Would You Want to Blog? • Writing practice • Creative outlet • Crystallize wisdom

• Contribute • Connect • Speed familiarity • Capture learning history

http://decker.typepad.com/welcome/2004/10/why_blog_7_reas.html

Object-oriented Activity in Blogging • Update others on activities and whereabouts • Express opinions to influence others • Seek others’ opinions and feedback

• “Think by writing” • Release emotional tension Blogs can serve many social purposes. There is really no limit to such purposes (sources of RSS feeds).

Teaching and Learning Blogs are an increasingly accepted as instructional technology tool. Blogs can be used for reflection about classes, careers, or current events; they can also capture and disseminate student- and faculty-generated content.”

“Blogs offer students, faculty, staff and others a high level of autonomy while creating a new opportunity for interaction with peers. Blogs provide a forum for discussion that goes beyond coursework to include culture, politics, and other areas of personal exploration. Students often learn as much from each other as from instructors or textbooks, and blogs offer another mechanism for peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and acquisition.”

The Social life of the Document

Social Life of the Document as means to make and maintain social groups • “Documents” are used for structuring and navigation of information and also as resource for constructing and negotiating social spaces. • With the evolution of technology there was a fear that that will be the end of the old document form and institutions (books, journals, newspapers, publishes and libraries); • Documents can be viewed as “Darts” or as a carrier for pre-formed ideas or information through time and space. They served to write and underwrite social interactions; to communicate and coordinate social practices.

Linking People through Text • Evolution of technology (copier, faxes, etc) started to support relations in new ways; • This type of new media helped forming small communities with common interests spread over large distances; • These communities are held together by documents circulation among members;

• One of the most popular example is the spread of “zines” –cheap and easy to produce, often put together at home;

• As Internet came along, forming new social groups became easier then ever (costs of publications went down)

• Equally the disintegration became more easier, separation in subgroups became very common • Old paper forms can be considered a source for stability where the new more volatile forms can be accounted for the instability

Documents role in Politics • Political scientist Benedict Anderson stresses the idea that a document culture was a key ingredient in the creation of independent nations in the late eighteenth century and United States is his example. • Documents like Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers, and the Constitution were essential in creating the idea of a self-constructed society built around shared ideals and shared practices

• popular cultural documents, such as journals, novels, pamphlets, ballad sheets he considers to be equally important in creating the cultural sense of common interests necessary for the nation's formation

• The proliferation of daily newspapers, pamphlets, journals, and tracts helped develop an implicit sense of community among the diverse and scattered population of the separate colonies and the emerging postrevolutionary nation • Radio and television programs and movies, all different types of document, have provided a similar and yet more extensive sense of social coordination

• Internet we can say is the more powerful medium for providing access to the same thing for people more widely dispersed than ever before

Negotiating Meaning • Circulation of documents helps create and maintain social communities and institutions • It Is the “community of interpretation” around the document under consideration which makes the meaning of the community • Even under these circumstances meaning can not be taken for granted

• Providing a shared context for constructing meaning, documents are the beginning rather than the end of the process of negotiation

Means for Negotiating • Documents usually raise debates (Bible) • Writing on writing and debates are an important part of the way meaning is negotiated • With new technology (i.e blogging, CoNote) this process can be used to make comments and view opinions • Interpretation of documents depends on community standards; documents play important roles in negotiating differences and coordinating practices between comunities

Engaging the Community • The increasing number of documents and decreasing amount of time available to readers raises the problem of what is called “Economy of Attention”

• The problem faced here is that the intended audience must be able to recognize the documents addressed to them • The assumption many make is that documents have universal appeal (why some blogs die while others are very popular)

Documents as Boundary Objects Patrolling and Controlling • Documents have been attributed different roles like “boundary objects” in the context of passing them between communities where they face different interpretation strategies

• Between communities documents can promote and decrease institutional development, depending on weather boundary objects lead to collaboration or control • Situations where patrol and control is necessary within a community is a requirement for secrecy (on internet encryption, restricted access, etc)

Documents, Determination, and Enabling • Many theorists of literacy conclude that on one hand documents can be instruments of power and control and on the other hand can be the beginning for democracy and the rise of individual freedom • Document technology and internet are only the instruments (enablers) with the potential to support various scenarios • Which scenario will prevail depends on the results of a great deal of social conduct but not determined by technology

Performance • Written documents are moving from permanence of old forms (paper documents, musical recordings) to the performance of new ones (shared documents, online editing, collaborative work, live video links)

• New technology minimized the technological separation of producer and consumer or writer and reader but the social distinction between them remain useful • The distinction between producer and consumer was enforced by old document technologies; through the new ones is a matter of negotiation, the distinction is now an option rather then a necessity

Fixed and Fluid • With the evolution of document technology (digital) it was thought that the fixity of old document will be replaced with the transient of the new form of document • The fixity of document is best understood not as an inferior and outdated alternative of conversation but, in appropriate places, as an object that plays valuable social roles as institutions demand (time stamps, hash marks, and other forms of electronic version identification) • The utility of both the fixed and fluid is recognized and new technology allows both separately or in the same time.

Conclusion • There has been a great deal of debate around the transition of old forms of the document to the new one • It is unlikely that the economy of the document has changed, people will abandon it • New technologies will help to continue to retain the active social life of the document; this will make people find ways to make it economically practical

Discussions are open now …