The Wiki Blog?

I had no idea what was actually behind Wikipaedia, although I have often wondered who is the author.....so my eyes were well and truely opened last week. I have often used Widipaedia as a "quick find", especially for photos for power point presentations.

I see advantages of using Wikis over blogs - the class can be much more targeted in their problem solving/research; the collective knowledge of the group determines what is accepted as new knowledge as it is discovered and constructed; students learn from others where to source the best information - there is no hiding of references etc as happens when classes do individual assignments; there is an in-built mechanism for watching how the students are learning due to the versioning capability of the wiki - allowing for great self/group reflection on learning.

For a good summary, see http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7004.pdf

There was a good article on the use of a public wiki in a German Speaking School Community, using the wiki of Sursee, and involved 100 students studying Greek mythology. Students were so enthusiastic, they continued the project after it had finished and the teacher had difficulty keeping up with the reading! The article also discusses barriers to using wikis, not least of which is teachers who lack ICT skills and fear being creative. I think public wikis, such as the one described reduces the need for duplication of teaching resources and "reinventing the wheel".

Just when I felt excited about Wikis, I decided to search the wiki of Sursee, but Sursee is a district in Switzerland. What I did find was a wiki for spelling , this site initially looked great, but upon closer scrutiny, it was like a a blog of dumped teaching material and I could not find any student interaction/ discussion. The history pages were the previous week's spelling list an only the teacher was posting to the site. I guess it served a purpose but struck me as underutilizing the capability of the wiki.

I had planned to say that wikis are better than Blogs, because Blogs tend to be less direct and represent the individual viewpoint. (Opps, now I learn it is in the hands of the person setting up the wiki!). But generally speaking, blogs with individual viewpoints are good if you want students to be reflective about their learning, but still have the ability to share content and feed off each other's ideas.

As a teacher, I would hope each of the different technologies that we are learning about has a place in the classroom, then when devising lesson plans, it will be a matter of balance and not restricting oneself to one form throughout the school year. I guess it is like different genres in literacy - a newspaper article vs a novel, vs a magazine article, vs a comic strip, vs a poem . With ICT we have email vs blog vs twitter vs wiki. I wonder if the term "genre" can be applied to different IT learning technologies? Or is there a better term to use?

Accessibility for all - introducing Universal Access Resource Page

Since the 1980s, as an Occupational Therapist working in vocational rehabilitation I have witnessed how home computers and access to the internet has expanded the range of vocational and recreational options available for people who have severe disabilities, such as quadriplegia. My first exposure to the Internet was during a home visit with a lady suffering from MS. She had overcome her social isolation by being linked to the outside world via the Internet, at that stage it was only Web 1.0, supported by the email.

Schools need to be aware of the The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) which was amended in 2005 to include Educational Standards , it is a legal requirment to provide equitable access to to all students unless to do so causes unjustifiable hardship.

Teachers in metropolitan WA would normally have access to health professionals (such as Speech Pathologists, Occupational Therapists) who provide advice for students with a disability where the disabilty affects ability to write, read, or use a computer. However I am interested in investigating further and capturing my findings by deveoping a "Universal Access Resource Page" on my blog - see the top left hand corner.

It is one thing to provide access to the all students, (which may mean the student with a disabiilty uses a different input device, or has specific software installed), it is another thing to integrate this student into a collaborative on-line learning experience with his/her peers. The teacher needs to ensure that what all students write or produce is compatible to devices/software that the studentwith the disability may be using. For example:-

A person who is colour blind may have difficulty seeing reds and green , so it is best to avoid titles and text in these colours. NB there are other types of colour blindness!

A person who has low vision may need to use a page reader, and other students will need to ensure that subtitles are used to describe pictures or graphics on their blogs.

A student with a different low vision problem may be able to distinguish between black and white and be able to decipher simple graphics, but not discern a picture presented as a photograph.

To assist with having uniformity on what is an acceptable standard in web page design, accessibility guidelines have been developed by W3C (W3C is short for World Wide Web Consortium, which has a mission to make the web accessible to all).

Personally, I still find it all mind boggling - and I have had some exposure to this topic over many years, so don't be worried if this feels like another quantum leap being demanded of your thinking!

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a social contructivist pedagogical approach?

A social constructivist approach when teaching children means that the teacher sets the scene for children to solve problems and find out answeres for themselves, relying on their social interaction and learning from each other. The main advantage is that children take responsibility for their own learning and it is more experiential, therefore they are more likley to remember what they find out, as opposed to being spoon fed all the information.
The disadvantage is that it can be more time consuming, requires children to have good interpersonal skills and communicate well with each other. Children with commicaiton difficulties, such as deafness can potentially be at a disadvantage. Without having explicit instruction on the scope of what they are to do, and if there is insufficient monitoring and supervision by the teacher, potentially children may go off in tangents.

Master of Primary Teaching at UWA

Hi there



As part of a Unit in Learning Technologies in Education at The University of Western Australia (which I am doing in the Masters of Primary Teaching) I am required to develop my own blog.

Being middle-aged, I am appreciating how education has changed immensely from when I went to school! Harnessing new technologies is one way that teaching can be made much more exciting.



So, come and join me in my journey!