E-Learning Experiences at Pepperdine University

Advantages and Disadvantages of Blog

I believe that there are lots of benefits of using Blog.

First is the ease of use. Blog is very easy to use and importantly it is free of charge. If anyone wants to post blog to tell stories about their personal interest, they can do that easily. Whether it is in the classroom or at work, blog can be used in several ways, namely, educating, entertaining, and communicating.

Second is the aspect of opinion sharing. People are allowed to comment on blog which makes e-learning become more powerful.

Third is the linkage of blog to other social tools, such as youtube, facebook, twitter, msn messenger, and photo album make blog a powerful medium of communication on certain knowledge once it links with other social tools, such as my blogs I created before coming to Pepperdine University.
http://mitocwclubthailand.blogspot.com/
http://thaikindle.blogspot.com/

Some companies use blog as a marketing strategy. For example, Marriott uses blog as a marketing tool.
http://www.blogs.marriott.com/

Whether it is for commercial or education purpose, blog is very useful.
Even for a small business which does not have money to pay for web hosting, blog can be used as a website to communicate to audience.

However, in reality blog is not as complicated as website. Website can be used more once you have lot of data to put on website. Blog does not have some limitations on link with some computer languages.
In order to create multimedia on blog with lot of information linked with database, blog can not be used.

Looking at other perspectives, blog can consist of junk information because it is free.
If it is free, one person can have so many blogs to write about anything, whether the information is right or wrong. One time I saw in my country that a citizen wrote information on politics on blog and release it by using email. I saw that blog in the email. Blog condemned Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinnawat.
I believe that we all do not know if that blog contains real information, facts or wrong data.
Many people believed that blog and forwarded mail on that blog. I saw so many comments on that blog.
The power of viral marketing using blog and email is so powerful that blog can be dangerous tool, especially when it is free.

With blog sitting there in the world of Internet, junk blog can pile up every day.
Can we imagine what will happen when the world is full of information in blog?

In summary, blog can be a powerful e-learning tool for class and for corporations at the same time blog can be social marketing tool to manipulate information in the case when Internet marketers use blog to put a lot of information to create links so that google can rank page as priority.

Lesson From Wikipedia

Based on my late research, Wikipedia is online encyclopedia which every reader can search to find terms in the Internet for free.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales described Wikipedia as "an effort to create and distribute a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest quality to every single person on the planet in his or her own language." Wikipedia exists to bring knowledge to everyone who seeks it. "

Referring to Wikipedia,

" By law the contributions are still owned by people who donated them. These people are not bound by the license and can use their property in the way they like. However media with multiple authors require permission from every contributor to use them differently from the terms of the Wikipedia license"

The scary part is that Wikipedia is not as trustworthy source of information. Although many people like to refer to Wikipedia as their learning source. I once found the errors on Wikipedia. There were information discrepancies even between Wikipedia in Thai language and Wikipedia in English language.
As the world is now changing, people google everything they want to know. The more we search information on Wikipedia, the higher chance that Wikipedia will be shown in google search engine ranking. When massive number of people search certain keywords, they will find a lot of information on Wikipedia which can be right or wrong. In addition, people refer to Wikipedia as a source. The dangerous part is that people refer to the untrustworthy source as a source. Therefore, mistakes/errors will NOT be corrected if no one finds it.Garbage in will finally be garbage out. As students and teachers do not cross check or validate information on Wikipedia, they can end up telling others wrong information. The others will keep telling the same wrong information to others.

Especially now there are social networks, such as facebook and twitter. The wrong information has become powerfully socialized. I will discuss more about Wikipedia in my official research paper.

Although I write the negative aspect of Wiki because it is related to my class research paper, I strongly believe that having Wikipedia is better than nothing. The way to benefit from it is to use coupled with other source of information. Like anything else in the world, Wikipedia offers benefit and disbenefit.

My last comments would be:
" Don't we think having Wikipedia is better than nothing?" Just because some media condemns it, that does not mean it is bad. Nothing is perfect. Wikipedia is a form of social media which can be right and wrong.
Media is influenced as well as social media, and Wikipedia is one of the social media because underlying principle is based on information from different sources.

Second Lesson Learn : E-learning with Google Docs

We have learned in class that Google Doc is a very powerful e-learning tool.
After exploring more in my free time, I have found that we can learn to use google doc in many other ways.

One way is to use google doc with skype. We can combine the two tools together and use it effectively. We can share google doc and chat with classmates on skype to edit our paper

Second way is to use google doc with facebook fan page. You can cut and paste link of google doc and edit with fan club members on facebook.

Third way is to use google doc with twitter. You can paste google doc link on your twitter, and tweet google link in 140 letters to your followers. Using google doc with twitter is a way to send a long message to your followers.

I have found that there are some useful websites on using Skype with Google Docs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5HxF8TVfg8&feature=related

Besides using Google Docs with Skype, I found two more useful youtube videos on using and sharing Google Doc and using slideshare.net which I like to share with my classmates

Using and Sharing Google Docs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2EVCgUCPfI&feature=fvsr
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MzcrQ4xUR0&feature=channel

Using Slideshare.net
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9ShKOeMKb0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY1zLdY-ZOc