What is a "blog?" Is a "wiki" a Polynesian drink with an umbrella? Are these two technologies changing the landscape of media in the modern world? Find out on this episode.
Guests
Nora Paul
Nora Paul
Nora is the director of the Institute for New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. From 1991 to 2000, she was with the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. She has held seminars in computer-assisted research and new media leadership. She was also editor for information services at the Miami Herald from 1979 to 1991.
Shane Nackerud
Shane Nackerud
Shane Nackerud has been the Web services coordinator for the University of Minnesota Libraries for the past seven years. Shane manages the University Libraries main Web site and the UThink blog project, which is the largest academic blogging site in North America. Shane also teaches a class at the College of St. Catherine called "Internet Fundamentals and Design."
Kurtis Scaletta
Kurtis Scaletta
Kurtis works at the Digital Media Center at the University of Minnesota. He helps faculty members and their assistants with software, scripting, and instructional design. He's also a graduate student at the University in instructional systems and technology.
For Your Files
Nora Paul, director of the Institute for New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota, defined "blog":
"A blog is really a contraction of two words, "web" and "log," and it's a software application that can be used online that allows somebody to create essentially a reverse chronological order diary. Blogs can also be commented on by others who read the postings, so the thread of comment and commentary that can happen through the blogs software is a very nice feature."
Shane Nackerud, Web services coordinator for the U of M Libraries, said creating your own blog is quite easy:
"All you need is a computer and an Internet connection and access to one of these blogging services that we're going to demonstrate. And then once you sign up you're a member of the blogoshere. This is free—the most popular of these services is called "Blogger," which is actually owned by Google, and it is a free service that anyone can sign up for."
Kurtis Scaletta of the U's Digital Media Center defined wikis:
"A wiki is a Web site that you can add content to, or edit the content of, just using a Web browser. The word is not an acronym for anything; it just means quick. It comes from Hawaiian."
And Kurtis discussed the difference between these two types of communications tools:
"A blog is organized reverse chronologically, and a wiki is more like a web. It's a knowledge web. So ideas spring off of other ideas and it just kind of grows amorphously like that. But I think the bigger difference is that blogs are pretty personal. I start my own blog and I keep it and other people can comment on it. But with a wiki, there is no sense of personal space in it. I like to say, 'there is no "I" in wiki,' just to be ironic."
Links:
Aggregator
A type of software that can be used to easily download blog postings and other types of blog-like content.
Blogosphere
A term used to describe all of the blogs on the Internet, collectively.
Wikipedia
From Wikipedia: "Wikipedia . . . is a multilingual Web-based free-content encyclopedia. It is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing articles to be changed by anyone with an Internet connection."