When thinking about wikis two things come to my mind. One is the very obvious, Wikipedia. The other is a course that I took last semester in which we used a wiki to post all of our course assignments. Wikipedia has countless applications for the classroom ranging from teaching students to critically evaluate sources, to creating and editing new pages based on student research (Hunt & Hunt, 2006). The wiki that was used in my coursework is the only experience I have with publishing and posting to a wiki. The professor set up a password protected site in which each student had their own login information. Each week everyone would post on a new page dedicated to that week’s reading assignment. Although we were required to evaluate and critique at least one other student’s post, we did not edit or change each other’s work. We were encouraged to edit and resubmit major assignments through the wiki based on the professor’s feedback. Looking back on the course wiki with the information I now know about the capabilities of wikis, I realize that we did not use the wiki to its fullest potential. There was no true collaboration between students happening on the course wiki.
One major concern that I and many teachers have about using wikis in the classroom is the ability for anyone to post and edit anything that is on the wiki. What if someone comes in and deletes quality student work. What if someone publishes false information? Reading Richardson’s text answered some of these questions. I did not realize, even when using a wiki for a class, that you can always revert back to the last correct post in a wiki. This is a great feature and it also deters people from vandalizing wikis. In response to publishing false information on the wiki Richardson says, “University of Buffalo professor Alex Halavais tested this by creating 13 errors on various posts on Wikipedia, all of which were fixed within a couple of hours (Halavais, 2004)” (Richardson, 2010, p. 56). Richardson’s ideas of using Wikipedia for students to write and publish for a real audience and creating a class Wikipedia are activities that I would like to try out in my own classroom someday. With some teacher practice and thought of how to effectively incorporate Wikipedia and wikis in the classroom, these web 2.0 tools can become very powerful learning experiences for our students.
Start your own wiki:
Hunt, T. J., & Hunt, B. (2006). New voices: Research and authority in an online word: Who knows? who decides?. The English Journal, 95(4), 89-92.
How do we promote that true collaboration? How do we use wikis to their full potential, as you’ve noted? In what practical ways do you think this is possible? I am interested in learning about the implications you foresee of these 2.0 tools in your classroom.
ReplyDeleteAnnie, You do have the start of a synthesis here, but I would like you to keep working towards including details from each of the readings as well as with your observations from following a wiki, or other respective 2.0 tools. According to http://www.dictionary.com to “synthesize” is to, “form (a material or abstract entity) by combining parts or elements.”
I think promoting true collaboration through wikis in the classroom is difficult. We need to model for our students how to collaborate with others. Setting up a wiki with a colleague and demonstrating true collaboration between the two of you could be a start. Fostering a collaborative classroom environment from day one is essential. Students will need practice in order to collaborate and feel comfortable editing each other's work on wikis. The examples in the Richardson text and the vignettes in Boling article that I read for my literature review show how wikis can be used to their fullest potential in the classroom, through true collaboration with peers in their class and around the world.
ReplyDeleteHi Annie! I'm checking out your blog this week. From an aethetic point of view, I like your design. The layout is clean and easy to follow.
ReplyDeleteI have not yet taken "Tests and Measurements" but am interested to see how the wiki you and others have talked about works in that class. From your descriptions, it doesn't sound like the truly collaborative wiki model that Richardson advocates. But I still am interested to see what it feels like to edit a wiki.
I agree with your insight about how useful the "history" feature of wiki pages is to protect against vandalism or poor choices on the part of some editors. I'm not sure if you watched it, but the "screencapture" about the evolution of one page on Wikipedia (the "Heavy Metal Umlaut") noted in Chapter 8 in the Richardson text is really cool to watch. Here's the link: http://jonudell.net/udell/gems/umlaut/umlaut.html The "screencaster" basically walks you through the development of the page over two years and shows how the history feature is useful.
Yet even with the history feature, I share some of your concerns about whether it would play out smoothly in a classroom setting. I sort of feel like the top students would end up doing most of the writing/editing, and the weaker students would not feel confident enough to make changes to those "alpha" students' writing. As much as we try to create classroom communities, I'm afraid the academic "pecking order" so to speak is often very apparent to students. Do you think this would affect their wiki participation?
I'll check back later to see your post about podcasting and digital stories :)
Annie,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you about our wiki for class last semester! I think actually having someone edit my own rather than just critique it would have been a better collaborative use of the wiki. I also liked the ideas that you pulled out of the Richardson chapter. I was surprised to learn about some of the aspects you mentioned in your post (being able to revert back to an old posting in a wiki and how quickly misinformation was corrected) as well when I read the articles myself. I think wikis are something that I would really use in my classroom to foster collaboration, meaningful writing, and a sense of community among my students.
Annie,
ReplyDeleteI agree that we certainly did not use the wiki to its fullest potential last semester. I feel that if we had known what we can actually do with wiki's that I would have felt differently about using it because I felt that we were using it just like we would use Blackboard to post our assignments.
Before the readings I would not think of using wiki's in my classroom because of the possibilty that the information could be changed in a second. However, the mini-study conducted by the University of Buffalo professor gave me more faith in the technology. It is important that students are able to critque and analyze the information they find when using a site like Wikipedia because the information can be changed. However, I love the fact that we are able to go back to the previous correct page and remove the incorrect information in an instant. This makes using wiki's in the classroom a bit more optimistic for me.