Why Wiki?

"...we can fulfill the idea that the classroom is a meeting place for the exchange and evolution of ideas."^[1]

Stewart Mader

The Benefits Instructional Design What exactly is a wiki? What do you think? A More Detailed View of Wiki

The Benefits

Teaching and learning are social activities; today's kids are connected in ways that no adult over twenty-five could have imagined just five years ago. Students today enjoy the connectedness of social networking; it is part of their very being. My goal is to bring my instruction into that cloud to teach the content required in ways that inspire online responsibility and ethics in this new, very public world. To that end, Parker and Chao summarize the research on the benefits of using a wiki in the classrom:

• wikis stimulate writing ('fun' and 'wiki' are often associated);
• wikis provide a low-cost but effective communication and collaboration tool (with an emphasis on text rather than software);
• wikis promote the close reading, revision, and tracking of preliminary work;
• wikis discourage 'product oriented writing' while facilitating 'writing as a process'; and wikis ease students into writing for a wider audience;
• summarize various assigned readings and post them on the wiki, and the rest of the class was allowed to edit collaboratively those postings to improve both accuracy and completeness;
• allow students to meet virtually at their convenience and work on projects together;
• gather, organize, and share writing, photos, videos, presentations,and other digital creations;
• enable extremely rich, flexible collaborations that have positive psychological consequences for their participants;
• gather, organize, and share writing, photos, videos, presentations,and other digital creations;
• prepare students to make innovative uses of collaborative software tools;
• manage business innovations of the future ^[2]

Instructional Design

I've always believed that I learn from my students, and that I need to know them and what they need in order to teach well.  I also believe that learning is a social activity, and that we learn by participating.  In addition, I know that all kids can learn, and that they are "smart" in different ways. Finally, a student can learn if s/he can see a target, has various supporting structures and resources, and has the opportunity and time to practice and improve with continuous feedback. A wiki provides the struture for all of those pedogogical implications:

Learning activities engage students in projects/products that benefit or inform others in real situations with options for students that promote their interests and strengths.

Learning resources involve in-hand, multi-media, primary, or "live" venues from which students can learn both the information and the process of gathering, analyzing, and synthesizing the learned concepts.

Learning supports provide the feedback and structure for students to succeed, according to their needs.

This diagram pulls all these ideas together to show what a classroom wiki can include:

From Peter Jones ^[3]

What exactly is a wiki?

From Common Craft ^[4]

What do you think?

Please look around on this site, then email me with your comments: ms_edwards@mac.com

Thanks.

A More Detailed View of Wiki

by Paul Maharg (Glasgow Graduate School of Law) ^[5]