Forum - Wikis or Blogs
We had to post our response to a moodle forum about the wiki or blog as well as comment on a classmates response.
a. Forum - Wikis. First post by July 10 or sooner. Response by July 12 noon.
Read A Review of Wiki Research (15 pages) posted here (Link). What do you think about the use of wikis in the classroom? After reading the article what information do you find in there that you might use to implement wikis in the classroom or for other educational uses? Details. What three things in the report surprise you and why? Which of the studies they use influence you the most? Please respond to one classmate who has no response as yet. After everyone has a response then you can add a second to anyone else in the group. Never use a wiki before? Here are a couple of links for your information, as follows:
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Optional: Additional reading if you're interested in Wikis.
Does collaboration occur when children are learning with the support of a wiki? They asked, Does collaboration occur when children are learning with the support of a wiki? How can collaboration be interpreted in a group activity with children?
See if they answer those questions.
Response:
What do you think about the use of wikis in the classroom?
I think wikis are a great tool for students and instructors to use. It allows both instructors and classmates to stay organized and receive feedback. By using a wiki, instructors and students can collaborate on projects and homework assignments. The wiki monitors any changes and additions to a wiki page so that the users can see who has made the changes, and can even revert the change back to the previous change. If using a wiki on the internet, students and instructors can work on projects and homework assignments in any location that has an internet connection. However, most wikis lack the ability to see changes happening in real time. This would prove to be disadvantageous because if multiple users edit the same page or section in the page, then the wiki would display the recent change first, and all the other changes become revisions in the wiki.
After reading the article what information do you find in there that you might use to implement wikis in the classroom or for other educational uses? Details.
I would want to create a wiki for course resources and use it as a knowledge base to brainstorm, as well as share thoughts and ideas. Since the wiki allows for versioning and documentation, I would have a network of resources for which I could search through to find relevant information and see past revisions.
What three things in the report surprise you and why?
I found that students would often not use a wiki to collaborate or help others because they want to defend their own accumulated knowledge rather than share with others surprised me (Hew and Cheung, 2009). In the field of Information Technology there tends to be an abundance of information sharing.
In addition, I found section on technical knowledge skills which can be found on page 152 was a surprise. Hew and Cheung ’s (2009) study determined that University students found the wiki software to be difficult to use. While I do not agree with this (as I found many wikis to be easy to use), I can understand how there can be a learning curve in using wiki technology, and the instructor should teach the users on how to use the wiki. Also, I found that if multiple users made changes to the wiki using the exact same instance, it saves both copies and sets the most recent submission to be shown as the main edit.
I was surprised that the study did not include any detrimental effects of using wikis over a long period of time, as this was not investigated by studies at the time of this writing (Hew & Cheung, 2009). I would assume that a longitudinal study in determining disadvantages of using wikis over a period of time would reveal any potential pitfalls in using wikis as an educational tool.
Which of the studies they use influence you the most?
Faranaugh’s (2007) study influenced me the most because it shows that we need to be aware of what type of wiki software we are using, and to have the most stable, secure, and up-to-date version. For example, the study noted that QwikiWiki was unstable and prone to crashing, which would provide users a bad experience in using wikis.
References
Faranaugh, R. (2007) ‘The Isle is full of noises’: using wiki software to establish a discourse community in a Shakespeare classroom’. Language Awareness, Vol. 16, pp. 41-56.
Hew, K.F. and Cheung, W.S. (2009) ‘Use of wikis in K-12 and higher education: a review of the research’ Int. J. Cont. Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning, Vol. 19, pp.144-155.
Classmates post:
1. What do you think about the use of wikis in the classroom? Wikis are a great way to stay organized as both an instructor and as a learner. It's also a great way to get immediate feedback from classmates and teachers through the use of collaboration. Using purely a wiki would be challenging in my classroom setting since I'm an art teacher and what we do is very hands on. However, a wiki could be used to share information like vocabulary, step-by-step instructions for projects, and instructional videos I create for students to view on their own time.
2. After reading the article, what information do you find in there that you might use to implement wikis in the classroom or for other educational uses? Encouraging students who are working in a group setting to use Wiki or something similar would help them communicate and collaborate in order to accomplish the task at hand. At the high school level, students are still learning how to work with their peers and by giving them this type of tool, it could help them communicate successfully and much more proficiently than using email, twitter, snapchat or other forms of technology they are accustomed to. I also need to keep in mind that not all of my students are as proficient with technology as other students. Maybe having students take a pre-survey to tell me if they've used wiki or other technologies before implementing it into the course is a good idea so I can teach skills they may not be familiar with.
3. What three things in the report surprise you and why? I was first surprised that the abstract stated that the question on whether the use of wikis can improve learners' outcome such as writing ability is unresolved. With the new implementation of google chrome books in my school district, I would have assumed that having technology readily available would have helped improve learners' writing abilities since typing can be easier to share and faster than handwriting. However I do need to realize that the study is drawn from literature from 2008 instead of the present. Another thing that surprised me was thinking that wiki was one of the first modes of technology that allowed people to communicate in such a streamline way since any user can edit at any time. This mode is natural to me as a teacher, learner, person in the 21st century because I have grown up around technology and have thankfully stayed pretty up to date. The third thing that surprised me was on page 151 when they mention the wiki usability. I agree that technology will be used when it is user friendly and in my experience of using wikis, I found them to be a little frustrating. Especially when having to create my own. How it allows you to customize it, how things are laid out seems to be a little outdated to me and I did get frustrated at times because I knew I needed to change something but couldn't. It mainly had to do with the fact that a wiki is not a word processor and that took some time to get used to.
4. Which of the studies they use influence you the most? Of the studies mentioned, I found Rick et al. (2002) to be most interesting because the study was based on a class taught by the same teacher but broken up into 2 groups via wiki and threaded online discussion. The hard data of what the students received as grades is nice to see and is less subjective in my opinion than asking student how they felt about the process since in the end, the same professor was assessing all students equally. However, I'm having a hard time assessing the proficient use of wikis in the classroom based on this research because they use data as from 2007 and older which is atlas 10 years ago. What has changed with technology and education in general has changed so much in the last 10 years, I'd like to have more updated information maybe from 2011 and on? I graduated from high school in 2008 and seeing what my students are technologically competent in now compared to me in high school isn't comparable. 95% of my students have smart phones. 95% my students know how to use a computer, check their email, use a word processor. That percentage wasn't anywhere close when I was in high school 10 years ago.
Response to classmates post:
I also found Rick et al. (2002) to be rather interesting. I also have a hard time assessing the proficiency of wikis based on this research, since this study was not conducted recently. The reason for this is the result of Moore’s Law, which states that computer processing speed doubles every 18 months. As computer processing speed exponentially increasing every year, technology becomes more advances. High school students would become proficient with utilizing the new technologies, since they would grow to use them as they age.
References
Rick, J., Guzdial, M., Carroll, K., Holloway-Attaway, L. and Walker, B. (2002) 'Collaborative learning at low cost: CoWeb use in English composition', Paper presented in theProceedings of the Computer Support for Collaborative Learning Conference (pp.435-442). Boulder, CO, USA.
b. Forum - Blogs (by July 11)
Watch
Choose any 2 blogs from the following:
The Chronicle of Higher Education (Blogs) (Web Link) Ed Tech K-12 Blogs PDF Link Web Link Blogs 101 (NY Times) PDF Link Web Link
Have other blog sites in mind? You can also try newspapers or journals. Just make sure they follow the same general pattern of opinion and discussion.
What to do: a. Identify the HOTS by listing the HOTS item with the sentence(s) that illustrate them. In a post to this forum, copy/paste the sentences with the HOTS identifier.
b. Then, post a response to the blog itself. Copy your response to your blog and identify your own HOTS points by placing the numbers at the end of each sentence where you use the HOTS.
1. Comparison 2. Deduction 3. Identification of components and relationships 4. Sorting 5. Asking questions 6. Suggesting a variety of perspectives 7. Suggesting different possibilities for problem solving 8. Hypothesizing 9. Isolation of variables 10. Representation of information and/or knowledge in different ways 11. Argumentation 12. Justification and evaluation of knowledge 13. Synthesis
Optional: Read the other Blog studies on the reading list for additional perspectives on using. One or both can be adapted as a model for your Inquiry Plan
