Wiki Collaboration within the wiki space
Reflection of my participation:
I began fairly early in the week and read the first 8 sightings and added my own as the ninth. It was interesting to see so many similarities in how people have been using or have seen social media being used in their context. The differences I think were in the depth of their use- what I mean is that some of us are using social media for real and authentic learning experiences and some us (for a variety of reasons) see social media used more outside of the ‘classroom’. I also added my suggestions to the wiki discussion about what I felt were the strategies and challenges for promoting the use of social media with students:
- Diana-to me the 5 primary challenges to engaging students in social media are: cybersafety/privacy, managing on task behaviour, assessment, providing feedback and the ‘novelty factor’ (familiarity and personal use may make it boring so how do we keep them intrinsically motivated?)- also I question if our students can multi-task: read http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95256794
- Diana- my suggested strategies are: begin with an introduction to social media using a social network (this could highlight a number of the challenges identified above- I co-created a ning for this purpose in 510), identify clear expectations/guidelines/consequences so students understand their role and yours, involve/invite/empower the parents, make sure the context is relevant to the students and FUN, variety-change it up and use a variety of social media to keep them engaged, agree Kathie,(introduction to student, parents and admin)(Evonne agrees here too!) Evonne would love to see Diana’s NING – sounds like a great set up! See here for the wiki and ning: https://teachingsocialnetworking.wikispaces.com/ and http://etec510.ning.com/ (the modules are under Events)
My Wiki Collaboration Opinion:
The Good:
It was a change of pace and kept most of us well out of our accustomed comfort zone! I have used Wikis before and I find them useful but for SMALL groups. It helps one understand/reminds them of how Wikis and Wikipedia word- it is amazing that Wikipedia is so coherent! It was also a reminder that we need to understand and practice html since you never know when you will need it!
The Bad:
At first I thought that this tool would be a highly effective way for a group to collaborate. I quickly realized that because it is unthreaded it was exceptionally difficult to organize and recognize new contributions and who the contributors were (unless they wrote their name). I found it much more challenging to use than our usual forum within the WebCT/\|Vista LMS particularly because you could not follow the flow of the discussion. Wikis are great for small group collaborations, my opinion.
The Ugly:
I had to remember to use html (mostly by copying everyone elses!) format to ensure that it was organized. I almost immediately noticed that some people were incredibly frustrated by the chaos that was our discussion- and because we cannot read each other’s minds, everyone had their own technique for ‘organizing’. I think some of us may have taken one look at our jumbled collaboration, freaked out and ran in the other direction. Had I contributed later on I may not have known where to ‘contribute’ new ideas and where to ‘discuss’ the ideas that had already been articulated. I also think that people were afraid to’edit’ the ideas of others so this needs to be clarified as well.
I think for a Wiki to work for a large group there needs to be clear criteria for how to ‘discuss’ and ‘contribute’ and put it together in the end. Perhaps an editor IS required (since our final product is complete but still a mess!).