FOE: Has anyone actually had a learning experience through a wiki rather than just 'absorbed knowledge'

Hi, this is something we are trying to think about as we are revising wiki usage in my workplace. Things like Wikiversity exist but do you think wikis can provide a full learning experience where someone goes through a complete learning experience cycle ?

Nicola

participate in a discussion page on something you care about.
trying to come to a negotiated truth on something important to you is a great social literacy.
much educational experience is about absorbing the one correct perspective.
wiki is about sharing a place where it is part of the whole participative process to try to include diversity and also to 'disagree safely'
http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia
communities are pov
point of view so people have to negotiate their construction of the information space.
that challenge of being able to be a constructive collaborative community is the core learning experience of wiki participation.

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If you use the wiki as it is meant to be used, a collaborative discovery tool, then not only have I had learned, but those with whom I have shared, it to have learned. Evaluating learning goes back to lesson design...what is the objectvie. So, if you see cooperation, negotiation, collaboration, as well technological skills, wordprocessing skills, research skills, summarizing skills, writing skills as bonafide learning, then the wiki can be the medium by which people can learn. I have been developing a workshop for teacher development on classroom wikis--and I have increased my learning in areas I already have experience and knowledge with: communication, html, patience, organization, etc. In some ways, I am feeling a bit guilty because the teachers who take my workshop will not have to go through the process as I did (however laborious), but they will learn.

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	Re: Has anyone actually had a learning experience through a wiki rather than just 'absorbed knowledge' by Peter Tittenberger - Friday, 8 June 2007, 08:42 AM
	This is less a comment than an invitation. We have a wiki page, about wikis, and their use in education. I would like to invite any of you interested in wikis as an educational technology to edit, and/or contribute to the wiki. It's at: http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wiki/index.php?title=Wikis You will have to create an acocunt to edit the page. We have to keep the spammers at bay Show parent \| Reply

I guess it depends on how you're using it.

I've had students present the results of a research project via a wiki. They certainly learnt something from the exercise (at least, I hope they did!). However, how much of that was the fact that I'd got them to do research & how much the fact that they were using a wiki, I don't know. (For example, I didn't ask them if they worked in the library together & created the wiki as they went, or if they worked in isolation finding out what each other had done via the wiki).

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I had my middle school students make collaborative wikis around a theme - in collaboration with another school we did wikis on biblical and technological themes. Within our school, we did wikis on the different biomes. Preparation of wikis was a major learning experience. The students were not blank slates upon which I wrote knowledge, but discovered and interacted with knowledge themselves.

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	Re: Has anyone actually had a learning experience through a wiki rather than just 'absorbed knowledge' by David Truss - Friday, 8 June 2007, 08:43 AM
	I think it is indeed the creation of the wiki itself that makes it a meaningful experience. My first experience using wikis in the classroom: http://sciencealive.wikispaces.com/ My reflection on the experience: http://eduspaces.net/dtruss/weblog/170102.html it is about CREATING knowledge: http://thethinkingstick.com/?p=400 Show parent \| Reply

Wow, there is so much to think about here, thanks so much...its very encouraging to know that others think that wikis can provide learning experiences and great examples too. has anyone ever discovered that students are competing with each other when collaborating on a wiki and what effect that has had on collaboration itself?

Nicola

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More than 'competing', I noticed that students got excited seeing what others did. The reaction was more of 'That's cool' than competition. There is a lot of student-to-student learning that occurs outside the walls of the classroom.

Also there is an amazing tool on wikis where you can go to the History page and see what different students did on the wiki, (at what time of day)- an excellent tool to hold kids who are not contributing to their group accountable!

I loved going to this History tool and seeing students actually editing something that another group member contributed- how often do you see that being done without teacher prompting?

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In a previous group discussion about Wiki's, an elementary school teacher showed an example where students did a project where they individually researched countries and shared the info in the wiki. The result was full of text, maps and images. The teacher was hoping to involve some kids from other countries in a similar project next year.

What I found exciting was rather than only the teacher seeing the results of the project the whole class got a chance to see. This sharing allows kids to get ideas about how to do future projects from each other, so there was learning about how to learn happening.

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	Re: Has anyone actually had a learning experience through a wiki rather than just 'absorbed knowledge' by Mrs Durff - Friday, 8 June 2007, 01:28 PM
	And the parents get to see it - always a plus! Show parent \| Reply

The core skill learned in participating in open communities is how to participate in a community where your own actions and the actions of your peers can make or break the space.

Given that the spaces are intended to be free the communities have to find ways to work with and around disruption without making the community less free. In most other situations our communities are responding to threats by making us less free.

Content blocking, no shampoo in airports, all of that stuff. The terrorists will blow us all up so we must be less free. We are less free every time there is a court case which decides for right of way of one person at the expense of access for communities generally, making things more restricted.

Because it costs to sue the general drift of legal outcomes is to contract the diffuse interests of community in favour of the specific and well financed interests which take action. Thus we get RIAA sueing 12 year olds for this generation's equivallent of sticking their artwork on the fridge.

I think it is important for our global ability to make coherent holistic inclusive and responsible decisions about our planet and its peoples for current and future generations to develop skills in working in negotiated free spaces, and to understand how important our own practices and choices are in maintaining those freedoms.

Wikis are a tool, open source software can be a tool, but the underlying ethos behind both are that people should have the right to participate, and that in order to maintain freedom we must try to each develop skills in making effective contributions, in context, and with the best signal to noise ratio we can achieve for any given context.

I feel like it is a cross between personal agency, citizenship, information literacy, and democracy as a daily practice. Being prepared not to have right of way for the common good. Being prepared to try something out to see if it is a better way. Listening, experimenting, comparing.

Both the tools and the laws that make this kind of participation possible are at odds with broadcast models of making tools and distributing ideas and information. We have some considerable way to go to make sure that participative practice is guaranteed as a choice under law.

In our education systems in particular the correlation between choices have direct outcomes: Control access v develop skills in negotiating public space. Open code which kids can be curious about and can even contribute too v no sharing of information, software, ideas.

These kinds of decisions about how the spaces we learn in are scoped are extremely strong factors in defining the kinds of risks and mistakes students are prepared to make in order to learn.

Freedom to be inquisitive, to be wrong, to pull something apart to tinker with it, to compare your ideas with others, to disagree safely(Jimmy Wales) these are all skills which will help students be more effective in whatever path they choose.

I feel they determine whether students develop as people who feel they can look under the hood to see how something works, and whether they are able to empathise with difference, and to combine with a diverse community to achieve a common goal.

We are all works in progress =).

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Janet, what a wonderful post. What I especially like is the focus on community (vs. the individual's "right" to step on others) and freedom to be wrong, inquisitive, pull something apart, compare your ideas, and to disagree safely. I think the focus of education should be to create these safe environments by negotiating and mediating spaces and ground rules (not establishing or creating the rules and spaces). To do this, the teachers and administrators need to feel they are part of a community, as do parents and students. I think when we begin to compartmentalize each person's responsibilities, we take away the freedoms that you outlined. What is wrong with an administrator being wrong about something and changing his or her mind? What is wrong with a parent being inquisitive about what his or her child is learning? I sometimes feel that my children's teachers think I am criticizing them when I question the purpose of an activity, when in fact, I want to understand it also (especially if my child is whining about it!) so I can put it into context for my child. What is wrong if a teacher makes a mistake or has a contrary view from parents, students, or administrators? It is important that there be discussion, communication, and a safe environment within the school.

I think one of the hardest things to handle is the "privacy" issue. The fact is, sometimes some pieces of information can needlessly harm others (i.e. if it prejudices others against them, it puts someone in an awkward situation, or it harms them--such as the whereabouts of a family when there is an abusive parent or spouse or gossip that is not true that could shatter a teenager). However, giving students the tools to address these problems (i.e. cybor bullying) and strengthening protection for those physically at risk seems like a more useful way then taking away tools so students are never taught the impact they may have within their communities.

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	Re: I think it is about skilling for freedom by Mrs Durff - Saturday, 9 June 2007, 07:08 AM
	And sometimes we do so unintentionally. I know my ethnocentrism, revealed to me during the Horizon Project, was unintentional, yet harmful. We can be the same way about privacy, thinking it is our right. Digital natives are much less wrapped up in privacy.... Show parent \| Reply

Absolutely!!!

We use the Westwood wiki to show our lessons and explain topics all of the time -- http://westwood.wikispaces.com.

The process that the students went through in the Horizon Project - http://horizonproject.wikispaces.com and the Flat Classroom project - http://flatclassroomproject.wikispaces.com were very much learning experiences.

I think that the process of creation of the wikis for the k12 online conference last year http://k12wiki.wikispaces.com was a learning process for the teachers.

It is the creation process that is the learning experience -- reading wikis -- that is not as much of a learning experience as the collaborative creation process where one reads, rereads, edits, adds to, discusses, researches, and adds to again is a very immersive process where one can learn a lot!

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I agree with Vicki.

I initially couldn't see the fuss but then I used a wiki inside my Moodle site recently and students had to read each other's entries and adjust if they saw fit. I started it by inserting a series of topics which linked to separate pages of content. It was a quick way to create a whole site of web pages based on one list of topics, waiting for content.

Students had rights to edit the pages but they couldn't track back to old versions - that was left to me as the teacher if I thought an error had been made.

The students associated the wiki with wikipedia, so it had instant approval from a youth culture perspective. That's important.

I think they achieved a lot more than if I just 'taught' the content. They were much more engaged.

An added benefit is how students are editing and publishing during this process - it is good training in content creation.

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	Re: Has anyone actually had a learning experience through a wiki rather than just 'absorbed knowledge' by Virginia Yonkers - Saturday, 9 June 2007, 06:42 AM
	Interestingly enough, I was just updating my webpage and uploaded student group work on technology. The group writing about blogs and wikis did so through blogs and wikis which demonstrated to my students (Masters level Curriculum Development and Instructional Technology students) the power of wikis and blogs! You can see it here http://etap529.pbwiki.com. Show parent \| Reply

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