BLOGS VS WIKIS

       

            If you don’t know what a wiki is, than you don’t know what the Internet is. Wiki’s were created with one thing mind, allow users to create, modify and organize the content of a web page. Remember encyclopedias? Well this is the encyclopedia of today’s generation. One of the most popular Wiki’s around is Wikipedia, which in an article in 2009, “Wikipedia to limit changes to articles on people” by Noam Cohen, states that the site had surpassed three million articles in 2009. True to the idea that anybody around the world could contribute and edit the web page, a governing body from Wikipedia has decided that its time to make the site more, “mature and dependable” according to the same New York Times article by. This comes upon the realization that the site is influential and dependable to people. Remember when they told you in middle school or high school to never use Wikipedia? Well its because anybody could edit information that was posted! In recent years the site has become more dependable, however Wiki’s exist all around the web for people to contribute in a database, edit and save by a click of a button.

            Blogs are a bit different, since they don’t allow anybody to edit and contribute to articles. In a blog only one person gets the opportunity to update their webpage regularly, they state their opinions and is written in an informal or conversational style. Blogs are very popular these days because everybody simply has an opinion about everything or they just love to share their experiences and thoughts. In another article by the NY Times, “Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid” byMichael Wilson, perfectly shows how blogs share experiences. The community was tired from the ongoing drug dealing from a house nearby and decided to blog the daily activities that occurred. These lines from the article say it best, “sometimes chronicling daily activities sometimes chronicling daily activities in detail, misspellings and all: “Several more crack heads came out of 346 93^rd street,” one woman wrote last year, “and one was trying to steal a ladder while I guess another which I could not tell, was male or female, who may have lived their claimed ownership to the ladder and they begain to fight.” Blogs are not like Wikis because they are more personal and dependent on the person who is running the blog. However they both bring communities together and allow them to share and distribute information.

            Sharing allows more people to be connected throughout the world; something that seems normal today but just 23 years ago wasn’t even a possibility. With this convergence people have been able to share ideas and develop knew ideas faster than any other generation has ever done before. We are always thought that everything can get done faster and done better ever since elementary school if we work together, either in groups or with partners. Well this convergence has allowed that to happen, and now ideas and solutions are easily shared and made better.

            I think a great idea would be if wikis could be used in schools to communicate with other schools from other countries and work on a single project together. It would be interesting if this program could initiate in middle school were students could get the opportunity to work with other people from totally different cultures and languages. I believe that wikis are perfect for this sort of experiment because it could allow students to work freely on webpages and allow other students from another place in the world to see and either learn or show other students certain things. In the end, it can allow students to share and grow with their ideas.