Wikis and Blogs

Saftey Rule: Do not put a child's full name or identifying information online!

Wikis and blogs are simply easy and free (usually) ways of publishing online. They make it simple to organize and host all of your digital content for a unit study or project online for everyone to see. This is a great way to share your homeschool triumphs with friends and realtives.

Wikis

To get a good definition of a wiki, I went to the wikipedia site:

A wiki is a website that allows visitors to add, remove, edit and change content, typically without the need for registration. It also allows for linking among any number of pages. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring.

pbWiki is a site that allows you "make a free wiki as easy as a peanut butter sandwich". Wikis are fun for setting up collaborative projects such as shared story writing. You can control the access to the wiki with passwords.

Wikispaces currently has a promotion for free premium wikispaces for educators. It is a little more complex to set up, but it also offers a lot more features than pbWiki.

 

Collaboration on projects is great for homeschool groups and co-ops. Using a wiki you can keep your students writing and communicating.

Personally, I've found wiki's to be great to use for homeschool groups. I've set one up for our county as a general homeschool information wiki that anyone in our homeschool group can add information about field trip ideas, links, support groups, etc.

Blogs

Most blog sites are free to sign up for and allow you the option of creating a public (open to everyone) or private (password protected) blog. Some blogs allow others to comment on your blog. I suggest turning off the comment option for younger kids. It would be great to get good comments on the blog, but there is the possibility of bad language and nasty comments.

Blogs generally are easier to set up than wikis. The content in a blog is organized chronologically by the date when you add the post.

On all these blogging sites I suggest that the homeschool teacher check it out and set up the login first. Some of the sites feature a blog of the day or blog of the minute - so always check the front page of the site before letting your kids log in.

Blogger is one of the biggest blogging sites on the web. They offer many features and are very easy to use and sign up for.

Word Press is another great blogging site. It is also free with lots of features including privacy options and great templates.

Tumblr is a extremely simple, fast blog but without some of the features in the blog sites above.