Research Proposal Idea Vlog

The following video contains a proposed research idea I have for researching more about the true educational value of ebooks.

Wiki Literature Review: Reflections After Last Use

The wiki is finished -- text, images, and videos included. If this project was not so top secret, I might actually share it with you. I guess you will just have to trust me when I say that it came out nicely.

Copying and pasting text from a Word document or from somewhere like Google docs can certainly pose a significant challenge in terms of formatting. If you are trying to write a document that is American Psychological Association (APA) styled, you might find yourself in for a battle. While Wikispaces does have a "paste from Word" tool, you may still find yourself fighting to get some of your lines in order and margins straight. For the technically-inclined individual, you may find it easier to go into the code mode and edit the text there. Regardless of your expertise, however, it is recommended that you only paste plain text into your wiki from the start. This usually helps you avoid any headaches in the long run trying to get rid of superfluous formatting carried over from other programs such as Microsoft Word.

Overall, however, Wikispaces is user-friendly and a great tool for collaborative writing and publishing simple multimedia texts online without the need for any HTML (or other Web design) experience.

For a great set of info and tutorials on Wikispaces and other Web 2.0 tools, check out this wiki: http://luedtechprogram.wikispaces.com/.

Wiki Literature Review: Reflections During Use

This post is to just give commentary on writing my wiki literature review while in the process of writing it. So far so good. My primary perceptions are still the same. I will say that I was writing with colleagues in a Google documents file. For collaborative writing, using Google documents seemed easier. Then, upon completion of the literature review, we moved the document into Wikispaces. This is no glamorous process. Basically, it is a copy and paste job that involves reformatting several things. The images need to be reimported into the wiki and then the videos need to be embedded. This may sound laborious, but it is really not that difficult in terms of processes. We could have created the document collaboratively in Wikispaces directly as well. It really comes down to personal preference.

Overall thoughts: Like any technology, the more you use it, the easier it gets. This is definitely not the first time I have used Wikispaces or wikis, in general, but it always takes at least a little time to get back into technology (and re-learning all of its quarks).

If you have used both a Wiki for collaborative writing and Google docs, which do you prefer?