Monday, July 28, 2008

Purpose of This Blog?

Every year, I add a “try a new feature” to my class website.

Last year - I added a class wiki which helped a bit administratively - especially as the class teams changed during the first 3 weeks.

This year, I’m adding a blog - but I haven’t decided yet whether it should be a general “rant” blog. Or perhaps for announcements instead of a wiki.

I guess - I’m using blogs and wiki’s for “relatively” easy website authoring. I find these tools a little easier than the process of creating a webpage and then “uploading” it to the web. Blogs also seem to keep history a bit better and will allow commenting while wiki’s are more of an information sharing paradigm.

I find myself a “late adopter” - partly because I’m cheap - and partly because I’m busy. Although in certain situations - I’m an early adoptor having bought a Roku device to watch Netflix and an Amazon Kindle for my son. I now have to buy 2nd devices since my whole family fights over both units. I don’t know what these means for whether these devices will “cross” the chasm, but my prediction is that Roku will get bought out eventually and the Kindle will be considered a successful disruptive new product category in 3 years. It disrupts the publishing value chain in addition to the book retailing value chain.