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.
Over the past few years, adolescent online content creators and mass global users, have ushered in the manifestation of Tim Berners Lee’s vision of a“collaborative (Read/Write) medium” (Richardson, 2010, pg.1) with the development of cost free, accessible, uncomplicated, internet publishing tools. Availability to create weblogs, wikis, podcasts and various, other online applications has inspired a massive increase of internet readers and writers around the globe, all conceding to sharing their opinions, ideas, products, stories and creating online media. In 2009, “Technorate.com noted “133 million blogs” (Richardson, 2010, pg 2). In addition,
Wikipedia currently has approximately “ 3 million separate entries” on subjects from A to Z. Early on founder Jimmy Wales, compelled us to "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge” (Richardson, 2010, pg 55). Today we are witnessing the reality that anyone who can read and write has the ability to create online media, and second by second, the world wide web is drawing closer to becoming “the sum of the source of all human knowledge”(pg.55) .
It’s all very exciting, but there is a downside from the perspective of education where many students exceed “their teachers in computer literacy” (Richardson, 2010, pg 6). Over the past few years, “tens of thousands of teachers… have begun using” (pg.6) technology tools to bridge the gap. These include blogs and wikis, which have a number of pedagogical uses and advantages. The web is flooded with resources for educators. This week’s coursework revealed the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008 by Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies. http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html
Educators today face a number of challenges when instructing students to become efficient online “readers, writers…editors… collaborators and publishers” (pg. 6). In this Read/Write era where anyone can author online content, students must understand the anomaly of online data and the importance of testing authorship and authenticity prior to accepting it as accurate. Major, ongoing challenges for teachers remain in the area of ensuring student privacy and protecting their students from “inappropriate content” (12).
References
Richardson (2010).Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms (3rd ed) Corwin
West, J.A. & West, M.L (2009).Using Wikis for Online Collaboration: The Power of the Read/Write Web. John Wiley and Sons Inc.
