A communal blog for ENGL 3177/5177: Web Logs and Wikis
morgan's office
course wiki

 
Free Wiki
PeanutButterWiki. I've just set one up (http://morgansnotes.pbwiki.com/) and it's a pretty good implementation. Looks like it's trying to be a blogger/gmail meme. This wiki thing might catch on.

* Free Wiki!
* Free Bill Poster
* Anarchy rules ok
posted by morgan at 11:00 AM

 
sweeeet! Other than the twin towers deal, it's like a prediction of the future.
posted by Froyd at 6:48 PM

 
This one is for Sean:
Microsoft's Earth deletes Apple HQ
posted by morgan at 10:37 AM

 
We were there first:

London’s Ravensbourne College is creating a new program called the School of Computing for the Creative Industries. The whole of the coursewear is Creative Commons licensed and the school itself is organized via a wiki. via Boing Boing

posted by morgan at 11:19 AM

 
Remember that Chronicle of Higher Ed article I mentioned a couple of weeks ago: Bloggers Need Not Apply? It's gotten some coverage from bloggers, of course. jill/txt is a good starting point. The gist: Blog blog blog - network - network - network. Jill writes, "Obviously, as a post-digital academic, I’d be worried about hiring someone who didn’t have a web presence."
posted by morgan at 7:08 AM

 
Cool. I'd be willing to bet we'll still pick up some visitors though...people will Google us.

Also, check out this article from CNN today: Bloggers learn the price of telling too much
posted by Berne at 2:09 PM

 
This won't be in print until next week, but Weblogs and Wikis is part of an article in The Chronicle of Higher Ed. Excerpts -

As a wiki grows, these networks of links become more labyrinthine. And concepts like authorship and organization take a back seat to the exchange of ideas, at least in theory. The ideal wiki is "a group of serious people working out a way of looking at things," says M.C. Morgan, a professor of English at Bemidji State University, who has taught courses with wikis for a couple of years.

The technology has been around for quite some time: Most experts agree that the first wiki was designed by Ward Cunningham, now a researcher with Microsoft, in 1995. But the profile of wikis has risen rapidly in the past two years, in large part due to the success of Wikipedia, an open-source encyclopedia that boasts thousands of contributors and frequently appears near the top of Google search results.

Wikipedia has become especially popular as a research tool for college students -- much to the chagrin of some professors, who consider the site's often-unsourced content to be dubious at best. Others, like Mr. Morgan, argue that wiki readers can find plenty of worthwhile content, as long as they scrutinize it as carefully as they would material on regular Web sites.

...

Wiki writing, according to Mr. Phillipson, is "a different kind of skill" than traditional long-form essay composition.

Mr. Morgan, of Bemidji State, says that is true. But he argues the wikis can play a prominent role in teaching the finer points of traditional composition, too.

Mr. Morgan has been using wikis in class since 2001, when he happened upon one such site and "saw an immediate connection with teaching freshman composition." In that course -- and in a course called "Weblogs and Wikis," which made its debut the following year -- he has encouraged students to adopt the technology for some surprisingly ambitious writing projects. (In "Weblogs and Wikis," one student wrote a wiki novel, which he continually edited online, while another used the technology to help her mother complete an autobiography.)

Writers who understand the technology, Mr. Morgan argues, can use wikis to look at their craft in a new way. Traditionally, writers complete a draft or two, proofread their work, revise it, and consider it finished. But wiki writers, Mr. Morgan says, are more likely to use a process he calls "refactoring": posting shards of text, spinning them off into larger pieces, reworking material constantly instead of doing so at set points during the writing process.

"On a wiki, the writing space is just a browser window," Mr. Morgan says. "Students see it as pretty plastic, and they're less apprehensive about throwing things out or reorganizing themselves than when they're using Microsoft Word."

Pity they didn't print the url to Weblogs and Wikis. Would have been nice to see visitors.

Print: The Chronicle: 7/15/2005: Romantic Poetry Meets 21st-Century Technology:
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i45/45a03501.htm
posted by morgan at 4:13 PM

 
The policing of blogs scares me. Now I hear that the gov't wants to start regulating them...what's next?
posted by Berne at 7:49 PM

 
Anyone reading might want to take a quick look at Print: The Chronicle: 7/8/2005: Bloggers Need Not Apply - an article on inappropriate blogging that might put off a hiring committee. If you've taken Weblogs and Wikis, it's old news. But it's a reminder from a new quarter that People are Reading.

Is this a great summer or what?
posted by morgan at 2:44 PM