Week two assignments include the development of this blog; a required assignment, which will be ongoing throughout the course. In addition, this week's assignments include twittering the blog. Learning to use these technology tools, and interlink them reveals innovative ways for a student to reflect, communicate thoughts, collaborate with others, and share ideas.
Developing a learning course wiki represents the greatest challenge of this weeks assignments. There are several elements to consider when using a wiki for learning, which include anticipating pitfalls. Most pitfalls  appear to relate to the actual interactions between a group of learners. These include fear and mistrust, which are in fact ”natural reactions”(West & West,2009, pg 46) according to James A. West and Margaret L. West, authors of ”Using Wikis for Online Collaboration “ (2009). Subsequently, conflicts can occur among group members when project standards are disregarded, and/or an imbalance of contribution among members exists.
The lack of “constructive editing ” (52) can create conflict and affect the wiki outcome. West and West list unflattering “behaviors ”(52) of editing, which include, do-it-all, over organizer, wikitroll, empty pager and lockdown manager. Because the objective is to have a successful wiki outcome, dependent on member editing, both monitoring and process checks should be adopted in early planning and structured as an assessment in the project. Individual assessments should also be prearranged into the course. These elements would prove helpful in confronting and resolving an individual’s failure to contribute and avoid “sticky wikis” (55).  Project coordinator, Brian Lamb, with the Office of Learning Technology at the University of British Columbia claims that overall " a wiki will generally have little difficulty remaining stable, assuming that people see value in its existence and have a genuine interest in keeping things tidy" (pg.6).  Much confusion and dismay can be prevented by initially clarifying members roles and responsibilities, establishing a “wiki etiquette” (38), and group “ ground rules”(38), promoting learners use of discussion tools, and having a clear understanding of the difference between controversy and conflict.

    
Lamb, B. Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not. Retrieved April 07, 2011 from http://tccl.rit.albany.edu/knilt/images/c/c1/Lamb(final).doc 
 West, J.A. & West, M.L (2009).Using Wikis for Online Collaboration: The Power of the Read/Write Web. John Wiley and Sons Inc.