Wiki’s; bad news, good news, and how students feel?
The asynchronous properties
make wikis a wonderful choice to establishing communication and share with colleagues,
students, and even friends. There is
good news and bad news about wikis as with most technology.
Bad news…
·
Some
training is needed if you have never worked with wikis before.
·
Since
it is, essentially an open website for all to use that can present problems. As easy, as it is to place things on a wiki as
it is to delete entries by anyone.
·
Wikis
need to be monitored for inappropriate language, spam, and/or incorrect or irrelevant
content.
·
You
have to consider the bias of the group who are contributors of the wiki.
·
Information
found on wikis are not always reliable, due to the fact that anyone can
contribute and you don’t know their level of expertise like in Wikipedia.
·
Wikis
can be blocked by Internet filters.
Wheeler, Yeomans,
& Wheeler (2008) researched The good,
the bad and the wiki; Evaluating student-generated content for collaborative learning. In their findings, they mention many
frustrations students experienced when dealing with wikis. Some felt that wikis were too unstructured
and they actually wanted more boundaries.
Many students only added to their wiki only when in class, leaving just a
few contributors actually doing most of the work. In the wiki environment, the users know each
other and worry about their contributions, they do not want to be criticized or judged,
and fear that other will make changes to their contributions.
Good news…
·
Extensive
webpage building knowledge is not needed to build or participate in wikis. With a few views of videos from YouTube.com
and you can be on your way to creating your very own webpage without a
cost.
·
You do
not need to know HTML codes.
·
You
can give users with author and editor privileges, which helps with not allowing
deletions. The wiki for Medt 7477 is set
up that way, only Dr. Cooper has editing privileges.
·
Editing
and making additions are in real time, there is no wait.
·
It is
a repository, a mail system, and a collaboration tool. It will allow audio, video, word documents,
and projects like PowerPoint to be housed in the ‘Cloud’.
·
It
can serve as an archiving tool for artifacts in the ‘wiki-folio’.
·
It
can be used as a presentation tool.
·
Can
be assessed anywhere you have Internet access.
·
Wikis
can be a great student led collaborative tool, which works well as students
being producers, commentators and classifiers of their own learning (Horizon,
2007).
Students who work in a social environment
develop skills that help them learn to evaluate information critically (DfES,
2006). Wheeler, Yeomans, & Wheeler
(2008) researched The Good, the Fad and
the Wiki; Evaluating student-generated content for collaborative learning. In their findings, they mention many
frustrations students experienced when dealing with wikis. Some felt that wikis were too unstructured
and they actually wanted more boundaries.
While initially students may be fearful of making contributions in a
wiki, this is a good place for them to develop confidence a needed skill when
entering college or a working environment. Learning to take advice and criticism is a
skill all need to be successful in life. Collaboration is a valuable skill we as
teachers need to teach our students and as they learn they practice critical
thinking, the art of negotiation, and how to exchange ideas.
Resources:
DfES. (2006). 2020Vision—Report of
the Teaching and Learning in 2020 Review Group. Nottingham: DfES
Publications. Retrieved February 16,
2013 from: http://www.teachfind.com/national-strategies/2020-vision-report-teaching-and-learning-review-group
Horizon Report (2007). The Horizon
Report 2007. Retrieved June 18, 2007, from http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2007_Horizon_Report.pdf]
Jurkowski, Odin. (2010). Technology and the School Library.
Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Wheeler, Steve. (2009). The good, the
bad and the wiki: Evaluating student-generated content for collaborative
learning. British Journal Educational Technology. Retrieved February 17, 2013
from: http://www.slideshare.net/timbuckteeth/the-good-the-bad-and-the-wiki-1173601
Madeline,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the way you wrote your Wiki post by breaking it down into good and bad characteristics. I do believe that there are many features of each. In reading over the areas of bad news, Wikis do require some instruction for use and require constant monitoring. In addition the contributing group does need to be taken into consideration regarding bias and prejudices. On the good side, it does become a wonderful collaboration tool for students or staff and/or a presentation tool. I think the idea behind using them in the media center requires further attention. I do not believe that they can be used to their fullest potential with younger students, but older students can easily use them as a collaborative device. To use a Wiki as an internal collective area for assignments or projects in both a school or work environment does make group projects an easier place to exchange ideas and tasks.
I really enjoyed your the layout of your blog - very easy to weigh the good and the bad of wikis.
ReplyDeleteI agree that from a collaboration stand point wikis are impressive and deserve more attention. However I also agree with Beth when she mentions that it would be difficult to reach their 'fullest potential' when dealing with younger students. Coming from an elementary school environment, this is one of the thoughts I have had about the use of wikis in both the classroom and the MC.
I also agree with your statement about the bias of the group or individuals that are posting on the wiki. While I think that the ability for anyone to post, on some level keeps all the contributors honest, it also allows for false information to be presented.
I like that you brought up the fact that anyone can edit a wiki and that sometimes the information added is not accurate. I think this is a good jumping off point for students to apply information literacy skills while using a wiki for research. Teachers could have students identify one or two statements or edits to a wiki that have been proved to be inaccurate. The students could then submit an edit to the wiki with the correct information. Through this exercise, students can learn that they are responsible for validating the information they find on the internet (not just in wikis), and that with a wiki, they are able to contribute accurate information pertaining to a particular topic.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I like the style in which you wrote your blog. (I need to learn to be less formal and more blog-like). Your blog was really easy to read and it gave good information.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that wikis can contain misinformation and have problems when too many people can add, edit, and delete. In a school setting, I would think that you would try to keep the number of people small. You might have different wikis for different classes. Also, as you stated, the teacher should only be able to delete information. As for the misinformation, it depends on the goal of the wiki and that is part of learning how to use a wiki. I think that if students were to post sources to a wiki, it is a great learning tool on how to find a credible source.
The most important part to me about wikis as you mentioned in your post is that you do not need extensive web knowledge to set up a wiki. This is a plus for teachers and media specialists.