Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs and Wikis are fundamentally different but are similar that the goal is to connect us with one another. Blogs are a personal platform where an individual shares their information, opinions, or stories. A downside to blogs is that it only lasts if people stay interested. This is seen with Tumblr in the article "Yahoo's Next Problem: Tumblr's Traffic Isn't Growing", where the reason why internet traffic in Tumblr halted due to Tumblr, a blogging website, lost its "cool". A Wiki is more collaborative where its goal is to share content with a group of people for information-sharing. Whether it is used for a group project or just to showcase the most information about a particular subject as possible, a Wiki has one goal and that is to share information. A Wiki has great amount of utility and even people in the corporate space are utilizing them to complete projects as seen in the article "More on How to Build Your Own Wikipedia".

Convergence is incredibly important in today's networked world. It is extremely important to be up to speed about everything that's happening in the world. The advancement in technology and social networking has allowed someone who hates watching the news or reading the newspaper to be able to do just that. It is socially looked down upon to be ignorant in today's time and convergence in today's networked world allows us to constantly be learning.

A blog can be used for collaboration as a advertising and advisement outlet. There are plenty of fashion blogs for example where the user advertises favorite fashion pieces and gives advice to people on how to wear these clothes. It's collaborative because the user gets feedback from other bloggers as well as the everyday viewer.

A Wiki can be used more in schools. Not just in classrooms, but in the school as a whole. Teachers at a middle school can create a Wiki where they contribute content on anything special that happened in class in a given day. This way other teachers can see and know if a child may be in a bad mood coming in to their class. This way teachers can be better connected and work more collaboratively with other teachers.