Here is a short summary of the wiki & blog session at online educa from friday Dec, 2. The room was to small and in front of the doors were waiting a huge amount of people trying to enter the session!
For me it was i sign, that the topic slow by slow is coming to germany.

Dr. Yael Ravin, IBM Learning Technologies, USA
Trends in the next 4 years.
- Collaborative
- power to the learner
- embedded learning in the worktime
- learning from others
Technologies:
- Instant Messaging,
- Web conferencing
- Expertise locators
- Blogs
- Wikis
If a company has 300.000 employees (like IBM) it is not easy to find the experts or the right person!
5 years ago instant messaging starts in IBM and the company don't like it. But the people want to have it. Now everyone use it!
The next wave is technology hand in hand with the business goals.
social computing

Example
- blue pages at IBM - every employee has an entry how to reach, a foto, a instant messaging nr., patents, etc.
I am astonished. It is a product which accesses different databases and brings the entries automatically to a webpage.
They try to establish social context online.
- Online "Jams" is how you discuss, brainstorm and vote within a large community.

Janette Kruger, Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa
Reflective Journal Writing: From Theory to Practice
she uses Blogs as a learning journal. The student have to blog and the teacher collect the rss feeds of this blogs in a feereader. They analyze the blogs in the number of postings and the length of postings. Some students didn't it, love it. Some of them blog on personal things, observations they did and suggestions they have.
Oh god! Then they try a plugin to write in Microsoft Word because of the spellchecking.
[i]it is similar idea like the [url=http://www.biworegio.net/component/option,com_newsfeeds/task,view/feedid,3/Itemid,86/]Biworegio projektblogs[/url]. It is good to see other people doing this too. But the Word thing irritates me [/i].

Jere Majava, University of Helsinki, Finland
Individualistic Practices and Communities of Learning: Educational Uses of Weblogs in Universities

They have started finish weblog portal in a self developped programming language. It is the easiest way to publish any informmation in the web.
They are also a place for conversation.
Weblogs are replacing the static homepages.
The size of the blogoshere double every 5 month since 5 years!

Wikis are collaboration and projectoriented
Weblogs are conversation and individual
Real bloggers own their data!
Conversational relationships creates open network.
Anyone can participate by starting a own blog

A weblog consists of:
- blogging tools
- permalinks (every entry is accessible)
- comment forms
- newsfeeds
- trackbacks

Basic rules
- Blogs represent people
- a Link is a gift
-- linking to people (posts) and things (footnote)
-- blogrolls -> annoucing your tribe
- published means permanent, please do not delete or edit

Weblogs in education
- Groupblogs don't work
- Freedem vs. control
- Blogs are great for informal learning

Benefits in education:
Continuty
Participation in a larger group is possible.
Blogs as a course platform are possible (Teacherblog, Hub-Newsaggregator, Student blogs)