Conference Notes
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Wikis in Education – Andrea Forte
Electronic Learning Communities Lab
Georgia Institute of Technology
-Sub track Wikis in Ed added because of interest from the field.
-Bulk of wiki material focused on higher ed; but high school and distance ed is also in there; very thin on kid education and needs to be worked on.
-Knowledge Consumption and Knowledge Production:
Knowledge is there for students to learn vs. it’s the student’s job to produce new knowledge.
Texts are useful as learning tools because experts write them for students vs texts are useful because writing them provides a meaningful reason for students to engage with intellectual material.
Knowledge Building = Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter
Constructionism = Seyour Papert
• Learning is a social/public process of construction.
• Learning activities should be connected to and valued by communities outside of schools.
• Students can and should be engaged in the real intellectual work of the world.
• Young people are capable of much more than we give them credit for.
Marie comment: ABE is already uniquely positioned for this approach to education – we already base our work on what the student brings with. We should study their website that will be launched soon – it describes how students use the wiki for writing and collaborative writing, and the site is structured with tools for supporting the management of the process and tracking students’ work.
Authenticity and Writing
• Personal authenticity – personal interest
• Read work authenticity - real audience/real purpose
• Disciplinary authenticity – citation, peer review, source evaluation
• Authentic assessment - -
Wikis in the Classroom
See: Guzdial, Rick, Kehoe, Carroll, Bruns & Humphreys, etc.
French Dewey: Celstine Freinet (early philosopher who discussed the use of technology)
Focused on writing in the humanities – science
Tools must explicitly support disciplinary practices like peer review, citation, and source evaluation – all must be standardized
Science Online goes live fall 06 – High School Level
Teacher Tools include:
• Class List for teacher includes graph for tracking which student did what and when
• Editing – drop down window that shows you who else has done what, and where you log your own work
• References – for writing/standardized format, graph can track who has done what here
• Evaluation of the source – all articles have main area where someone can comment on the source (white house press release vs scientific white paper on global warming); any piece of text that has a reference takes you back to the evaluation of the source page for that reference, no matter what piece of text you are at.
Students’ names are never posted in the public domain – only the teacher is allowed to see students’ names (for ethical reasons).
Collaborative Learning in a Wiki Environment
Open University of Israel
Edna Tal & Hagit Tal
Largest U in Israel – Distance Learning Institution (40K students; age 13 to 85; 600 courses; open admission)
Example:
MA in education and technology
Assignment: Build glossary of terms
Similar structures as the Science Writing above; the management tools for tracking student work and culling data appear to be paramount tools in general for use in classroom teaching/support.
Project managers researched the impact of the wiki assignment on learning from the students’ perspective using tools for assessing the quantity of collaborations between students (again: tracking data). However, findings note that this assignment and use of wiki depends highly on the interaction of the instructor giving feedback and encouraging active participation.
Marie comment: I have also found this to be true in my on-line courses: the more I interact on DB (Discussion Board), Live Chats, and especially giving feedback (individual and collective) on pass-in assignments, the more that people seem compelled to share/join/contribute. I have also found this to be true among classroom participants – especially at DB – DB seems to be an area where people feel really psyched to share and ask questions and make comments to each other. I think it’s the format there: go anytime, read/write anything/visit often or whenever you can/defined and private space for participants.
Wiki Book @ HighEd
Gilad Ravid & Sheizaf Rafaeli
http://misbook.yeda.info
Business/info management systems
New tool in development: Dynamic Table of Contents (so that teachers can switch stuff around in their courses)
Marie comment: Again – tools shown were for tracking student work and collecting data; I get that this whole area is focused on the accountability of the service delivery at this point. The actual teaching tools that have been described are assignments that ask students to collaborate on a piece of writing – whether a full text, a glossary of terms, or reading/reviewing/editing an entire book. All three examples describe situations in which the student is a captive audience (high school or college level) which of course is distinct for ours. Have yet to see any type of “teaching via wiki” with language learning (collaborative writing falls under this, true), math, and…….reading!!!!
Wikiversity:
• Educational material - Materials will be formatted for use in class/self-study/learning groups.
• Learning communities – need to find new ways for learning communitiesw to function efficiently in a wiki environment – need management systems and delivery tools.
• Research (maybe) – not typical in wikis, but probably makes sense here.
Intent is for teachers to be able to use hands-on materials from here; wikiversity is not focused on ebooks, it should not be a repository. It should be set up as a collection of user resources with supporting materials/instructions for facilitating the tasks and activities. It can also be a space where you can come and learn about a subject you are interested in. Intended as a collaborative learning model for both teachers and students.
Wikiversity is a problematic name because the site is not confined to university/college level material – it will have all types of materials at all levels. The name could be misconstrued by the community of users.
Afternoon session on Wikis in Education:
Konieczny: Teaching Tools – wish I could see this!
