Wikis in a middle school classroom

Clarence Fisher (of Remote Access), a middle school teacher, writes about how his class is "Wikifying Knowledge" about ancient history. He writes,

As we return to our study of Egypt this week, our wiki will become an active space again. Over the previous unit, as students used this tool for the first time, we learned a great deal about collecting and shaping knowledge. Students learned that they had to be active researchers, collectors, and designers of knowledge. They were interested in the fact that something written by one of their classmates could be added to, edited, and re - shaped by others. This was a new revelation for many of them. Starting to use this tool again this week, it first of all will be interesting to see if the kids still retain this understanding of using a wiki as a learning tool.

But he wonders:

But there is no original information that goes in to this space, it all comes from other spaces. So the question rises: is there any reason to use a wiki if we are using it only to collect information? Is it any different from taking regular notes on paper?

He responds affirmatively that there are some differences, differences of 24-hour accessibility, a public audience, and:

because the wiki is a space that anyone in our classroom can contribute to, it becomes much more then a single set of notes, it becomes an evolving, communal collection of our knowledge and understanding that grows in depth as our understanding does.

Using a wiki in this way also forces students to determine the importance and validity of information. Over the last unit of study, students were forced several times to confront the fact that they had posted information online that was not completely correct. They were forced to revise what they had written and re - think their understandings. Sorting, validating, and exposing overwhelming amounts of information is a skill that simply cannot be demonstrated or practiced using text that is not electronic.

I can't improve on what Clarence has already said, but I'd like to rephrase it. It is the interactions among the students and the recursive nature of re-visiting information that confronts them with contradictions between an individual's understanding and that of others, contradictions that lead them to reflect and re-construct their understanding, which in turn leads to a better understanding that is retained much longer.

It's important to realize that the teacher is a crucial element in wikis being used as more than a collection of information. As Clarence concludes,

although using a wiki to collect information can seem to be simply taking electronic notes, it can be a lot more.

Tech Tools for Learning

Will Richardson has an article, Tech Tools for Learning, published in Access Learning, which you can download from his recent posting here. His opening paragraph reads:

Over the last few years, our relationship with the Web has been changing dramatically. Simple new technologies like weblogs and podcasts are allowing us to not only create content like text, audio, and video more easily, they are also allowing us to publish and share that content on the Web with very little effort. Instead of a “read only” Web, we’re entering the age of the Read/Write Web, where contributing knowledge is as easy as consuming it. Being able to publish worldwide this easily does raise legal and ethical issues for educators to be aware of, but it also facilitates a whole range of new learning potentials for students and teachers in the classroom. Here is a quick look at some of the technologies that are changing the way educators think about and deliver instruction.

He has quite a bit of information on technology tools for education (RSS, blogs, wikis, podcasting, and streaming video with links) packed into 4 pages. Recommended.

Things you can do with RSS

On the Tim Yang Wiki, there's a great list of things you can do with RSS (via Blogniscient via Ed Bott via Steve Rubel).

Losing posts

Several students have lost what they posted to the class wiki. Sometimes when in class with everyone on at the same time, it's just that their posting gets hidden in an earlier version because of the differences in opening the edit page and saving the edit page. When outside of class, it may be due to using a browser besides Internet Explorer or Mozilla. I'm not sure. Still this can be avoided if first one writes in MS Word, saving every few minutes; next emailing the finished product to oneself; and then copying and pasting into the wiki. Even if the "save" does not take effect, it's easy to copy from MS Word and re-paste in.

First day with editme

Yesterday in class, we adjusted to the new wiki site, learning how to edit documents, how not to edit the wrong document, and how not to rename documents when simply adding new information to an existing document.

And there were glitches. Some computers in the classroom apparently stopped students from logging in. When registering students a few days ago, I assumed wrongly that the default user permissions included editing pages. And I hadn't considered how to identify individual students' work.

editme, an excellent wiki

For a free wiki, schtuff.com was good, but to do anything interesting required a knowledge of HTML. In contrast, for just 4.95/mo., editme.com offers WYSIWYG with all the features you would find in word processing, which will allow the students to focus on ideas and design rather than the underlying HTML.

Posting on a wiki

Last night, the class submitted article summaries, individual and group, on our wiki space. Somehow, work was being deleted, and so, we had to go to earlier versions to copy the deleted work and paste it back into the current version. In fact, my home page document was replaced by another document! In the process, although I helped a little, much of the learning occurred through students assisting each other.

Wikis at Penn State

Marissa Carl reports on English classes at Penn State using wikis, I suppose, much the same way we are in our class.

Working with schtuff.com

Tonight, my class experimented with posting on our wiki, learning a few tags and how to make a link. After the class ended, I learned how to delete items. It's easy to delete an entire document, but if it's only part of a document, you need to simply erase that part, because "delete" applies to the whole document.

Composition & Rhetoric Wiki textbook

(From Kairos News) Matt Barton has started a Composition and Rhetoric Wiki book for first-year composition and is going to involve an upper level composition course in helping. He writes:

I've decided to conduct a rather risky experiment in my Computers and English course this semester: A semester-long class project whose goal is to create a free wikitext for use as a first-year composition textbook. The course is cross-listed, with about 13 seniors and juniors and 2 (maybe 3) English graduate students with teaching experience at the college and high school level. Some of the students are English majors, but others have mass comm and IT backgrounds. In other words, this is in many ways my ideal mix for a project like this. I started working on the Rhetoric and Composition Wikitext nearly a year ago, but development has been slow. The project is hosted at wikibooks, a project specifically devoted to the purpose of creating and distributing free educational materials. I think this is a valuable service learning project that will help the class reach several of its goals--gain experience with writing technologies, develop good collaboration skills, and learn about writing and writing instruction all at the same time. I think it's going to be a fun project, and so far the class morale is extremely high. Everyone is excited about the project, especially me!

More software tools

From Educational Weblogs:

schtuff.com: a free wiki service

Schtuff is a FREE Wiki service. A Wiki is a website that lets anyone easily create and edit pages, promoting group collaboration.

photon: another free software tool.

Smart, intuitive, and highly configurable, Daikini Photon gives you the power to manage your Movable Type™, TypePad™, Blojsom and WordPress photo-blogs in the familiar surrounds of Apple iPhoto.

It's the missing link between the world's greatest photo management software and the world's favorite blogging platforms.

Increase in malware

Louisa Hearn (in the Sydney Morning Herald via The Blog Herald) reports a large increase in malware targeting computer uses. Moreover, hackers are becoming more innovative by residing on blogs and community sites like wikis.

"Photo albums, scrapbooks, blogs, screensavers and free greeting cards are all becoming potentially dangerous destinations as hackers and cyber criminals take advantage of a lack of security features on many of the hosting sites where they reside."