Bev's Blog

I don’t know how I missed this posting- but I did. I commented on other’s but some how forgot about my own. Better late than never. This was the fourth time I participated in a wiki activity for a MET course. The first two experiences were in ETEC 540, and the third was in 510. All the experiences were interesting and different especially the one in 510. In 510 I worked with a group of three people. We each has our own section to work on and then we all took turns editing. In 565 and 540, all assignments involved the entire class, and very little delegation of who was responsible for what. The classes had no overt conversation about how the assignment was going to be handled so it just took on a life of its own.

In 565 we were asked to post social networking “sightings” and then come up with 5 key strategies and 5 key challenges in regards to social networking in education. Students posted some very interesting and engaging “sightings” and several students added to the list strategies and affordances. I am not sure that there was any real closure to this assignment. Because we didn’t have a plan, nor had we delegated responsibility, there was no closure at the end. We needed to come back to the activity and bring closure through asking some questions like: Are we done? What did we learn?

Wiki’s don’t seem the ideal space to hold discussion. I did post some questions or comments on some people’s links, but I don’t think they ever saw the questions. I never got a response. Had we completed this same activity in Vista, I am sure that people would have responded to my questions. In 510 our wiki space involved providing information much like an entry you would find in Wikipedia. I think this space is ideal for this type of activity. It lends it self well to a space for information rather than discussion.

I enjoyed the activity as I really enjoyed reading about people’s sighting, but I wouldn’t recommend wiki’s for this type of activity. I think a more structured forum would work better.

I am creating a course site on Digital Storytelling ( DST) for my ETEC 565 project. This digital storytelling module will provide an opportunity for students and teachers to learn about digital storytelling, create a class project, and finally have the opportunity to develop their own digital story. This module will be used by several classes and is being developed to support the students as well as teachers who have never used DST before.

Anderson ( 2008) holds that if we are going to provide effective on-line learning spaces we need to include community centered activities that allow learners to collaboratively create new knowledge. This project requires a collaborative space that will allow students to brain-storm, contribute and edit a shared documents, upload samples of various multi-media including still images, videos, and music , provide feedback to peers and pose questions to peers and the teacher.

Although there will be several community centered activities through-out this project, one of the spaces I have created is a wiki for my digital storytelling module. The class will use this wiki to work through the process of creating a group digital story. The wiki will provide a space for students to learn about DST and practice the steps in a safe collaborative place before they start on their own projects. The teachers will have the opportunity to assess student understandings before they begin to work on their personal stories. A wiki provides the ideal space for group work and brainstorming, both needed to complete the class project. The binary function will allow the student to add sample images and music. Using a wiki also allows students to explore in a digital space, the same space that they will be creating their own stories. The asynchronous nature of the wiki will allow the students time to think about their answers, and will also provide a permanent record of ideas that they can return to later.

I will be able to track student contributions by clicking the history tab. At the same time students contributions can be made anonymously if we choose to do it that way.

The only concern I have about this wiki space is that it does not allow for simultaneous editing. If this becomes a problem I will create an external wiki that does allow for this and create a link to the Moodle project.

Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an Online Learning Context. In: Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca University.

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