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?
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I would call them different media, because for me they're different text forms that children need to deconstruct. I think most teachers tend to experiment with what's available (and more yet who are too afraid to go beyond what they know) and (even though I fear I'm sounding like a broken record) it still comes down to how well you know your kids, their capabilities and what suits the learning task. It's very likely none of the above media will suit a lesson idea, but something else will. Trial and error, I guess.
ReplyDeleteYou could also refer to them as different tools. In fact, you could see the collection of all these tools as a kind of toolbox: and, a bit like choosing the right hammer or screwdriver for a given task, it's a case of choosing the best digital tool for a given learning activity.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I like the 'Digital World' video you've embedded at the top of your blog.
ReplyDelete