Wikis, blogs, social spaces uncovered .......
Wikis
The origins of wikis and some limited discussion can be found in the previous posting. The benefits are obvious, most particularly in terms of students involved in group publishing activities. The complexity of setting up a wiki and managing groups is, as yet, unknown but the benefits make it worth pursuing.
Lyndsay Grant's Case Study "Using Wikis in Schools" (May 2006) provides us with an excellent example of independent learning via a school-based collaborative activity. The 11 year-old students were asked to collaborate on a history project looking at "Technological developments since 1950" using a wiki (from wikispaces) to publish their findings. Despite this being a group project the students tended to get very protective over "their" web pages and seemed to work in isolation,
"very few edited material on others' pages" (Grant, 2006) On one occasion however, a child moderated the work of others as they had misread the brief. Whilst the original authors took this very badly and subsequently ignored the advice, the child-moderator would have learned a great deal.
The ability to look at each others' work and to evaluate it is very beneficial to learning and the wiki technology enables this to happen very simply, in an interactive, fun way. Unfortunately the learners perceive risk in 1) posting their ideas publicly and 2) becoming a class swot "acting like teacher". The problem, then is not the technology but the group dynamic, the peer pressure that prevails.
View of Self - does the learner feel confident enough in their own abilities to comment on other people's work?
Relationships - will commenting (usually negatively) spoil relationships with classmates?
Reputation - will the learner's reputation in the group be damaged as a result?
Personal experience with group work at Level 5 (HE) would suggest that these concerns diminish the longer the group has worked together. Eight PR students (in their second year) collaborated very successfully on a student newspaper assignment using Blackboard's discussion board as the main communication tool. A wiki would have offered a much better interface for a collaborative activity of this kind.
BCUC's Public Relations students excel themselves again with this excellent publication for those student living at Chalfont Campus.
The origins of wikis and some limited discussion can be found in the previous posting. The benefits are obvious, most particularly in terms of students involved in group publishing activities. The complexity of setting up a wiki and managing groups is, as yet, unknown but the benefits make it worth pursuing.
Lyndsay Grant's Case Study "Using Wikis in Schools" (May 2006) provides us with an excellent example of independent learning via a school-based collaborative activity. The 11 year-old students were asked to collaborate on a history project looking at "Technological developments since 1950" using a wiki (from wikispaces) to publish their findings. Despite this being a group project the students tended to get very protective over "their" web pages and seemed to work in isolation, "very few edited material on others' pages" (Grant, 2006) On one occasion however, a child moderated the work of others as they had misread the brief. Whilst the original authors took this very badly and subsequently ignored the advice, the child-moderator would have learned a great deal.
The ability to look at each others' work and to evaluate it is very beneficial to learning and the wiki technology enables this to happen very simply, in an interactive, fun way. Unfortunately the learners perceive risk in 1) posting their ideas publicly and 2) becoming a class swot "acting like teacher". The problem, then is not the technology but the group dynamic, the peer pressure that prevails.
View of Self - does the learner feel confident enough in their own abilities to comment on other people's work?
Relationships - will commenting (usually negatively) spoil relationships with classmates?
Reputation - will the learner's reputation in the group be damaged as a result?
Personal experience with group work at Level 5 (HE) would suggest that these concerns diminish the longer the group has worked together. Eight PR students (in their second year) collaborated very successfully on a student newspaper assignment using Blackboard's discussion board as the main communication tool. A wiki would have offered a much better interface for a collaborative activity of this kind.
BCUC's Public Relations students excel themselves again with this excellent publication for those student living at Chalfont Campus.
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