Our Class Wiki for the Activity
The wiki activity involved coming up with some key Strategies and Challenges in using social networking tools in our educational settings. I like how we started by bringing our own experience (“sightings”) to the wiki. We have a lot of great human resources in our class with various experiences. This was the easy part. The hard part came when we had to, as a group, develop 5 key strategies and challenges. I felt lost and disconnected with the rest of the group. The discussion area didn’t really work for me. I added my 2 cents worth. I usually step up to the plate and help lead group work but this time I decided to sit back and see what happens. Key members of the class did take the lead. Social networking sites need “someone” in charge, facilitating groups towards a common goal or things will be lost or dropped but that is similar in all social gatherings whether it be a sporting event or backyard party.
Wiki is a great collaboration tool as long as it is asynchronous. Using a wiki inside a class when everyone is trying to access the same wiki page at the same time is problematic. I use pbworks.com in my class. Students have to steal the page from each other to edit it. Unlike Googledocs, where students can work on the same document at the same time. To get around this ‘page stealing issue’, I get the students to pick a topic. Since each topic is on a separate page, there usually isn’t any problems with stealing pages. It becomes a jigsaw activity. Individuals explore different topics but as a group a solid knowledge base is created.
In my experience, people have a hard time editing each others work. People tend to write notes besides others work instead of deleting. I guess folks are trying to be polite. I really was not impressed with the discussion feature and rarely use it myself. I prefer to use a wiki as a knowledge/content building activity not for discussions. I much prefer threads for discussions.