Blog v. Wiki

Blogs and Wiki are new forms of media introduced since the evolution of the Internet and old media.  Today, these web pages are heavily used for information and communication amongst various modes of other media.  They can be used for informational, educational, and personal purposes. Today, they can easily be published to the webpage(s), and accessed or viewed by others. Yet, there are differences in the how content is organized as well as presented.

Blogs, like journalism (news articles or reports), are formatted by posts marked by the author's post date and time.  Blogs can be used for brainstorming or collaboratively producing ideas.  In the field of education, teachers can use blogs to discuss topics, and gain insight on their students' perspectives.  Unlike Wiki's, blogs can be limited to one author who has control over the message and content.  Posts are then followed by comments that are opinionated or conversational.  The discussions on blogs are ongoing, and fresh or in-the-momnet. A collaborative effort , reported by the New York Times, revealed a drug raid in Brooklyn through conversations of concerned neighbors (Wilson, Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid).

Wiki's, can merely be information-based and modified by more than one author. This form consists of content that is more organized and clean, in which contributors would edit the webpages (information, links, etc.) in order to keep information up-to-date and credible.  Information can be contributed over time (an ongoing process), whereas blogs present the latest news on the top of the webpage or archive list.  In education, teachers can present syllabuses and links to their lesson plans, accessible to students and parents.  However, in a network that enables anyone to contribute, there are likely to be inaccurate information and too much information flooding a topic.  It is a risk for viewers reading misleading content, as well as contributors presenting insightful and "helpful" content (Sutler, Wikipedia: No Longer the Wild West?).

I cannot think of a new way of using wiki's, yet I recently found an article about the Vatican using Wikipedia to catalog cardinals' biographies.  I was surprised in the fact that the Vatican was open to it.
Vatican Uses Wikipedia to Compile Cardinals' Biographies