The Otago Blogs and Otago Wikis services provide something a little more powerful than the simple Blackboard wikis and blogs.

Using Blackboard/Moodle wikis and blogs is great if you just need a limited feature set and you don’t need the blogs and wikis to exist after the end of the semester. The Otago Blogs and Otago Wikis services are different from those built into Blackboard or Moodle. They provide many more options.

Otago Blogs

The Otago Blogs service is built on WordPress, which you may be familiar with if you have a personal blog on wordpress.com.

A blog typically contains chronological posts on a particular topic, and can contain images and links. Blog members can comment on posts. You can also create static pages, manage your navigation with customised menus, and organise content using tags and categories.

You can restrict a blog to a particular class list, or make it public. A link to a blog can be inserted into Blackboard or Moodle.

There is a help site available and support is offered via AskOtago. 

You must fill in a form to request a Blog site. The form can be found here.

There is no charge for using Otago Blogs.

Otago Wikis

A wiki is a collaborative content-building environment which includes some useful tracking and revision features.

Otago Wiki service is built on MediaWiki, which is the same software that runs Wikipedia.

While you can make your wiki private, there is no capability to add an entire class list all at once. You would need to add each student individually. The other option is to make your wiki public.

You can insert a link to a wiki in Blackboard or Moodle.

There is a help site available and support is offered via AskOtago.

You must fill in a form to request a Wiki site. The form can be found here.

There is no charge for using Otago Wikis.