Group 1 Tools - Wiki Reflection

My wiki can be found here.

The use of a wiki in the classroom I believe, provides the most difficult integration challenge for teachers. A wiki is a type of website that allows the user of that website, to add, modify and delete page content. It differs from a traditional website in that a standard website can only be modified by the owner (like a read only file), whereas a wiki can be modified by anyone who is able to access it. Fasso (2013) likens it to a “never-ending, paginated sheet of online butchers paper.”

From creating my own wiki, it becomes apparent that everything about a wiki can be modified. Everything. From the title of the page to the content, to the videos to the pictures and everything in between, someone can change it. In the classroom, this provides a potential disastrous situation.

This being said though, wikis can be used as valued tools in the classroom. From being used as a collaboration tool for assessment, research, brainstorming and creating online resources between students, wikis can be used to broaden the discussion taking learning outside the 19^th century classroom and into the 21^st century world. Students should be taught correct etiquette for using wikis, just like they are taught correct etiquette for all parts of their life (this could be described as meta-etiquettes e.g. golf etiquette, library etiquette, wiki etiquette, dinner etiquette).

Here is an excellent article on Blog and Wiki etiquette. 

Wikis are a valued tool in the classroom due to the flexibility and somewhat organic growth they are able to achieve. This presents the same issue that blogs do that they become overarching behemoths and flatten the pedagogies and content they are supposed to work in harmony with. For this reason, the TPCK framework must be utilised for the benefit of the lesson. The wiki should always be scaffolded to focus on the content using such structures as Blooms Taxonomy or a PMI analysis among others. I believe that if correctly used, wikis can become a powerful tool for creating interactive learning skills for 21^st century learners.

There are several examples of ways I could use wikis in my KLA (the Arts). Here are a few examples:

• Creating a dictionary of Musical Terms in a table
• Ask students to add their thoughts to a well-worded question (Blooms) discussing a musical concept/genre
• Get students to post single instrument recorded tracks to their wiki (using a common theme/song) where students can then access them and mix and edit them and the combine them into a song.
• Ask students to post any issues they have or challenging questions to the class wiki for classmates to collaborate and answer, working together (Stop, Collaborate and Listen…).
• Ask students for homework to find 10 YouTube clips fitting a certain genre. Links are to be posted to the wiki. Other students can comment on what they think of the songs. (Scaffolding needed.)

Finally, using a wiki as a classroom tool as many implications, both positive and negative. The following PMI Analysis is a helpful tool to structure my analysis.

Plusses

• Ability to grow with a group of learners – progress then becomes visual.
• Flexible and able to be designed for many uses
• Collaboration stimulates group work
• Fosters Connectivism for students
• Sharing becomes much easier
• Teachers can have an oversight in the learning, not actually teaching, letting the students do it.
• Caters for various learning theories – constructivism (building on previous material), cognitivism (thinking about it and drawing conclusions from others work), behaviourism (wikis can be used for similar activities several times without students becoming bored) and Connectivism (able to connect to other parts of the Internet and information discovery alone.

Minuses

• Anyone can add, modify and delete. Safety issue, potential calamity for content.
• Only 1 person can edit at a time (blogs can be done as many whenever)
• Wiki etiquette can easily be ignored
• Students need to be taught how to use a wiki. Detracts from content.
• People who aren’t part of the class (anyone) can access the wiki

Interesting

• Can be accessed anywhere, anytime with mobile devices.
• Technology fosters the subconscious retaining of content. Conning is half the act.

References

Fasso, W. (2013). Digital tool 2: Wikis for Collaborative Learning. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICTs for Learning Design, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/pluginfile.php/407928/mod_page/content/8/wikis.html