Monday, July 6, 2015
Are wikis a useful educational tool?
As Dr. Friedberg had pointed out in his video, wikis can be useful classroom tools for collaboration and creativity. If you take some time to look at examples of wikis in education, you will see that this learning tool is used as early as elementary school up to the Doctoral level. Below are a couple examples of how other teachers have implemented wiki's:
The Adult Literacy Education Wiki - One stop shop for learning about and contributing to the field of adult education.
EduTechWiki- Technology resource wiki for teachers, researchers, instructional designers, etc.
Remedial Work Wiki- Wiki designed for a 6th grade EFL (English as a Foreign Language) class
U.S History Wiki- Mr. Armstrong designed this wiki for his 8th grade U.S History class to promote student investigation of history.
Looking for resources to implement a wiki of your own? Check out Tony Karrer's eLearning Blog for a list of 60 resources for using wikis in learning.
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This week I had an opportunity to participate in a class wiki, adding and editing content. I can see the potential for this learning platform at many levels of education but especially post-secondary. Editing required careful consideration of content already posted, synthesizing material from research, and posting in a way that continued to develop an idea as opposed to breaking it down. There was clear evidence of barn raising (collaborative discussion) in this weeks activities within the wiki. Overall I enjoyed the format but there were some moments of confusion since the content is being continually changed.The facilitators for the week did a great job of modeling, guiding, and monitoring student engagement which I would say is absolutely necessary for the beginning stages of a class wiki. Teachers need to comfortable with the wiki format and be able to help students trouble shoot prior to asking student to engage with it.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with your comments about wikis being of particular use in post-secondary education. The careful editing and collaboration needed to make the wiki a safe and successful teaching tool would be best in post-secondary.
ReplyDeleteI too had moments of confusion. Our group facilitators this week did a great job with posting tips and keeping us on track. Without strong leadership, I could see the wiki becoming disorganized and confusing.
I agree, that wiki allows collaborative discussion. As a group, we were able to share ideas, collaborate resources, and have an opportunity to learn little more about your classmate. According to Myers (1991), “collaborative learning exercises are students centered and enable students to share authority and empower themselves with responsibility of building on their foundational knowledge.”
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