Week 8 Discussion

Hello ladies and gentleman,

This week I decided to look for an article that on a popular site called Reddit. Reddit is a site that always seems to have the most recent and up to date news stories from around the globe. This weeks story that caught my attention was titled “Scientists gear up to drill into ‘ground zero’ of theimpact that killed the dinosaurs”. It talks about how this month, a drilling platform will rise in the Gulf of Mexico, but it won’t be aiming for oil. Scientists are going to try and sink a diamond-tipped bit into the heart of Chicxulub crater—the buried remnant of the asteroid impact 66 million years ago that killed off the dinosaurs, along with most other life on the planet. I think it will be interesting to learn more history about the past, and more specifically dinosaurs.

(Reddit, 2015)

It was interesting this week to have a chance to further explore wikis. How could I see myself using a wiki you ask? Well the answer is simple; I have actually been using them for years now. Of course the most notable one that I’m most familiar with is “Wikipedia”.  I have always been told to stay away from Wikipedia when doing any form of schoolwork, however I truly believe there is a lot of good “take-aways” from this site. I believe that a wiki is similar to a blog because it is a website that anyone can create and share their own ideas. The freedom of posting whatever you want to your personal blog can also be carried over when making a wiki. I believe that a wiki can also be similar to Google Docs because if you have a public wiki, then technically anyone can edit it at any time. This is similar to Google Docs because when you’re invited to a group, anyone can also edit the same document at any given time.

(Johnson, 2013)

I believe that there are many different ways that a wiki can be used to benefit someone.  For starters, a wiki is a web communication and collaboration tool that can be used to engage students in learning with others within a collaborative environment. Wikis allow visitors to engage in dialog and share information among participants in group projects, or to engage in learning with each other by using wikis as a collaborative environment in which to construct their knowledge. Having the ability to collaborate with other students through the use of a wiki could be very helpful and I would like to give it a try sometime.

Regards,

Andy Walker