I promised several people a "HIT" on my question (regarding what is better
for book reviews, a blog or a wiki).
I could not believe the fantastic and very prompt responses I received. You
guys are awesome!! By the way, I have set up a blog, but our school filter
is blocking some of the images. The techies are trying to figure out the
problem (I would think they could put an exception on my web address??)
--
Sheryl Lee
Library/Media Specialist
DCWest Middle School
Waterloo, NE
booklvr77@cox.net
Here are the responses I received (I have removed names and web addresses):
------------
A blog is better than a wiki for your purpose. (A wiki is better for
collaborative projects, though, and pbwiki would be a good choice for that
purpose.) I think an easy one is blogger. You can set it up so that users
request access to the blog in order to post. You can then set it up to
moderate the comments so that you see them before they are actually posted.
------------
I think that you are looking for a blog. You post something and the kids can
comment and you can review the comments before they become public. I use
Wordpress, Edublogs, or Blogmeister which is designed specifically for
schools.
------------
I would use a blog for what you have in mind. You can set it up so
that comments are moderated by you. You'd get an email saying there
was a new comment on the blog and then you can choose to approve it or
not. I use blogger.com for my blog and it works great.
We also have a wiki but it is more for individual work or a
collaborative project.
------------
I'm using PBwiki and it seems to be working out fine. Our district has
filter, so blogger is not working. I'm on a few times a day, just to
monitor. They really are taking to it quite well.
------------
If you have Destiny, students can be given rights to upload reviews, videos,
podcasts, etc. to the catalog.
------------
try blogmeister too! I would use a blog for this type of activitiy instead
of a wiki.
------------
We have a high school blog and each teacher in my elementary school has
one. I don't know which is preferable, but I love our blogs!
------------
I went through the same thing--and decided to go with the blog because it
gave me the ability to edit and even pre-approve posts if needed. Also, the
organization is much better. I have used wikis since for other purposes,
and still believe that a blog is more conducive to a book review format-it
is just much easier to navigate and find things.
------------
Wikis are good - but a bit less "user friendly" I think. Also - you
might find that most or all of them are blocked by your school's content
filter. Also true of many blogs. Edublogs is generally allowed. A
caution about edublogs. The free version uses ads. I especially do not
like the way the ads are inserted. The appear as double hyperlink lines
below key words. So - if you post a review of a book that includes the
word "overweight" - it is likely to be underlined and when "moused-over"
a pop-up ad for a weight loss product would come up. Since it is
accomplished via hyperlinks - it can look as if you yourself have linked
to the that site. For that reason, I bit the bullet and paid the $40
per year to become an "edublog supporter" which gives me an ad-free
blog.
All that said - I like edublogs. It is easy to organize. I think this
might be what you are looking for. I can easily see it with book
reviews followed by comments. Edublogs allows you to have complete
control of who comments. When you initially set it up - you will click
on "settings" and you will eventually find a place where you can limit
commenting ability to only those that you as the moderator approve.
I have a teacher who has a class blog. You might want to have a look.
He has his kids choose books and then from there he puts up a post with
the name of their book and some guidelines on what he wants them to
answer about the book - and then the kids send comments to the blog.
------------
I have the same questions.
Our county is experimenting with moodle.
I believe postings can be controlled. It is being used by classes.
I am using blogspot.com and although I have not used it for students, I
can control who has rights to publish.
------------
You might want to consider wikispaces. You can sign up for an educator's
wiki with no ads on it. You can make it an open wiki, where anyone can
contribute, no registration needed. Or, better yet, you can require people
to create a wiki spaces account and get your permission to join the blog. If
you send them the names of the students you want to have access to it,
they'll send you back a password for each student.
You can then have it set up so that you get an email notificatiobn anytime
someone makes a post to the wiki. Since it tells you who made the post to
the wiki, you can remove it if it's inappropriate, and you'll also know who
posted it, since you will be able to tell which user made the change.
Wikispaces also has a discussion thread, where kids can post comments about
books, etc.
------------
I've been using a blog for several years for book reviews, as do the other
media folks here in my town. We set them up through the free blogger
software at through gmail, which is free also. You can turn on the allow
student comments section if you wish.
------------
For book reviews I would definitely start with a Blog. It is a little
more sequential and the things that are written are fixed (opposed to
the ever-changing wiki). Done is done. You can still list links and
additional information but it is a little more orderly.
A generalized rule of thumb is blogs for opinions and wiki's for facts.
Nothing set in stone though because I have definitely seen wiki's that
have taken "factual" to an extreme and blogs used to present factual
information.
Book blogs can be a lot of fun and they tend to suck the kids in once
they get started. Everyone loves being able to share an opinion that
the world can share in.
------------
We just had a book discussion blog in conjunction with a One Book
program. We used blogger with great results. Students (or anyone) do
not have to have an email address; they can select name/url from drop
down window when they are ready to post a comment. We set it up so that
we had approval before anything was posted.
------------
Wikispaces allows free teacher wikis. I would not want my students to have
to sign up for anything. The teacher gives her students permission when she
set up the page. Sounds better to me.
------------
I used a wiki to list all new books this year and asked students and
teachers to review them as they read them. It is a public wiki, no
sign-in necessary. Pretty casual.
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