Presented at EDUCAUSE Annual Conferences and Blogs

Blogs, wikis, and networking tools appear to gain widespread acceptance. How are higher education professionals using social software tools in their practice? Is there any convergence with what students using them bring to the institution? We will invite participation to explore these questions and determine if there are international differentiators.

Personal authoring technologies have made it easier than ever for instructors and students to contribute their thoughts, experiences, and opinions to a global discourse. In addition, these technologies provide a rich opportunity for instructors to focus their students' attention on discipline-specific questions related to a single course or topic.

This seminar will give attendees valuable "face time" with blogs, wikis, and podcasts in order to critically assess their instructional value and creative potential, as well as the IT infrastructure required to support them. We will demonstrate the numerous technologies UW-Madison is using, discuss the pedagogical application and assessment of these technologies, present an overview of IT support challenges, and provide hands-on experiences with the production of blogs, wikis, and podcasts. The seminar will conclude with a discussion of other personal authoring technologies emerging on the educational horizon.