Sartz’s Blog

A question which I get asked a lot is what’s the difference between a Wiki and a Blog. The answer as is often the case with these Web 2.0 tools not particularly clear cut. However the definition which I always fall back to is that a Blog is one person publishing to many. A blog is the Web 2.0 equiavalent of a journal, except that people can access it easily and involve themselves in a dialogue with the author. A blog then is a “one to many” document and is a great way to encourage students (and adults) to write. A wiki is a very similar sort of beast. However a wiki allows a group of people to work on a task collaboratively. When you use a wiki you can still add similar content as you would in your blog, but you have the added advantage of allowing others to contribute to the wiki as well.

So does this mean that a wiki is a better tool to use in the classroom than a blog? No I don’t think so, although some might disagree, both tools have their uses. For me at least I have discovered a new found freedom in being able to post to my blog. I think of this blog is mine it’s quite personal and as such creates ownership for the blogger. A wiki on the other hand is a collaborative tool and belongs to the group. The wiki however has its place in the classroom and can be used a variety of ways to encourage collaboration. Not only that but there is quite an array of free wiki’s out there which we can use.

Now that I am comfortable in my blog, I have started to probe the surrounding cyberspace to find a wiki to call my own. After a quick Google search, I narrowed my list of hopefuls down to three wiki’s wikispaces, wetpaint and pbwiki. All of these wiki sites provide a decent wiki and have varied features.
 

Wikispaces provides a solid platform for wiki’s it has plenty of storage space for files (2Gb) and is very easy to use. When you first join wikispaces you will notice that ad’s appear on your page, you will have to click on the upgrade link to notify wikispaces that you are an educator and they will remove all of the ad’s and enable a couple of other features for your wiki. The page editing tools are pretty standard but there is a huge array of widgets that you can add to your page that range from calendars to movies or flash interactives. My one gripe about wikispaces is that you are very limited in the way the page looks with only a limited range of features being available to change the look and feel of the page.

It is only fair to mention that pbwiki is still in beta which means that they are still adding features to it. But I have to say I was a little disappointed with the lack of ways in which I could change the look and feel of the page, with only one style and 10 color combinations I felt a little limited in how I could personalise the page. Having said that I really liked the design of the page, it was easy to navigate and looked good. pbwiki also places the discussion threads on the bottom of the wiki page (much like a blog), a feature that I didn’t like but may suit others better. pbwiki is ad free without upgradeing which was nice and had 10 Mb of file space which was a little on the small side, but I guess people could use Google Docs or Xdrive to store the files and then just link across to them from pbwiki. pbwiki did have a great security system though and enabled a myriad of security settings.

I only set up my wetpaint account last night but have been impressed by the features which it has. Each page in Wetpaint has several built in tabs including a Photo Gallery, To Do List, Discussion Forum, etc. The actual pages look great with enough eye candy to keep anyone happy. The security features on the site are pretty standard but has enough flexabilty to set it up the way you want. My biggest gripe about wetpaint is that you can only send a maximum of 40 files to the wiki. This doesn’t include images but is still somewhat limiting. Wetpaint also has a lot of ad’s on the pages, but these can be removed if you are an educator and apply to wetpaint for the ad’s to be removed.

So which one should you use? It depends on what you want to do. If you don’t have a lot of dccuments to send up, I think Wetpaint might just fit the bill nicely. If you are looking at placing lots of files on your wiki but don’t need the eye candy then wikispaces is for you. It might also be worth visiting pbwiki over the next few months, I suspect that they will be making a lot of changes and may well be a player in the future.

This entry was posted on May 8, 2008 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.