Creating a Wiki

Week 3 - Engagement Activity 3

 

Reflection on Creating a Wiki

A wiki is a website where information, experience, knowledge, thoughts and perspectives can be shared. Readers can contribute to a wiki through editing, adding, deleting and/or organising content. The wiki is a collaborative online tool that provides a means of communication among people with common interests and goals. It is not recommended as a reliable source for the purpose of academic writing since information contained within wikis is not always accurate, and generally constitutes a work in progress. Nevertheless, as an online collaborative tool, the wiki provides an effective platform for communication and discussion among students, and can be utilised in numerous ways to enhance learning outcomes in the educational context. 

Within the early childhood years of schooling, wikis provide a wonderful tool for children to work collaboratively toward the gathering of knowledge and creation of valuable resources. This activity provides both a learning experience throughout the creation phase and a reference source to support subsequent learning experiences. Examples include: 

Pre-Prep or Prep Letters & Sounds Wiki: 

Children as young as pre-prep can be asked to search Google for pictures of items, objects, animals and so on, whose names begin with specific letters of the alphabet. Pages could be provided for each letter of the alphabet, where images can be pasted. This could be reviewed periodically in group time, or simply accessed as the children are interested during free play. Children could also work on this project from home with family members, creating a sense of community in the creation of this resource.  

Pre-Prep ‘This Goes With That’ Game & other ideas: 

Children can be encouraged to find missing images to make pairs of items usually found together, such as ‘cup and saucer’, or ‘toothbrush and toothpaste’ etc. One item of the pair could be embedded in a two-column table and children search the internet for its ‘mate’, which is then pasted in the next column. Children could add further ‘pairs’ as they think of them. Again, parents can assist with this activity. Similarly, a game of opposites could be played. Another suggestion could be to create a page of different emotions, where children find pictures of faces expressing happy, sad, frightened etc, and add these to the correct ‘emotipage’ (my word/concept!) Similar activities promoting understanding of the five senses could be scaffolded, whereby children find images of things they can see, hear, touch, taste and smell and paste in the correct ‘sensoripage’ (again, my invention!)  

Years 1-3 Tricky Words Wikis (Tricky Wikis): 

Students practise sounding out tricky words. For example, an image of a tyrannosaurus rex might be embedded in a year 3 wiki, and students have a go at spelling such words without the use of a dictionary. Perhaps once per week, these words can be reviewed and mnemonics or other spelling strategies developed to help students remember the correct spelling. Students could also add interesting facts on a separate page about the ‘thing’ the word represents, in this case, the tyrannosaurus rex. 

Years 1 – 3 Collaborative Projects:  

Students can gather information to contribute to class projects. For example, if learning about insects, students could take turns researching and adding names, descriptions, habitats and pictures of insects.

 

STRENGTHS	WEAKNESSES
Can be used collaboratively. Can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. Variety and volume of content. Participants working within Vygotsky’s ZPD, likely to learn more than if working in isolation, with access to more information than they might have sourced individually. Students learn correct etiquette/ social skills/ consideration for others, which they can extend to other contexts. Students learn critical thinking skills as they consider the accuracy of information presented and seek to organise content into non-duplicated form. Provides opportunity for social interaction and ‘fun’ in the learning process, as individuals work together toward a common goal. Provides encouragement for students to work on a project, knowing they are not the only one working and responsible for the outcome (which can sometimes be daunting).	Information contributed is not always accurate, which can lead to learning of incorrect material. Not all students have access to internet (& wiki) from home. Some students may rush in and over-contribute information, so other students feel they have little to contribute. Some students may assume the role of chief organisers and offend other students by editing or deleting their contributions. If more than one person is simultaneously updating the wiki, only one person’s work will be applied.
OPPORTUNITIES	THREATS
For students to learn significantly more than if researching and preparing projects alone (ZPD). For additional activities (at school and home) during early years that consolidate learning of basic concepts, which lay a strong foundation for future learning. To introduce young children to ICTs, so that they gain familiarity with these from an early age, and are well prepared for C21st life.	Students self-esteem may suffer if their contributions are continually deleted. Disregard for etiquette could result in offensive material being included in wiki. Useful and relevant information may be deleted. Although this can be retrieved, unless someone knows it is missing it may never be reinstated.

Before encouraging children to become immersed in the world of cyberspace, it is important to consider safety, legal and ethical issues within the online environment. Left uncensored, the internet can present students with unsafe, undesirable material, such as pornographic, sexually explicit, offensive, hateful and violent content, and can also encourage them to perform dangerous and illegal practices (Central Queensland University, n.d.).  Therefore, school internet access should be censored to avoid such risks. Also, students should be aware that not everyone they meet online is who they say they are, therefore ‘stranger danger’ applies in the online context as it does in the real world. It is also important that students understand the potential repercussions of cyber-bullying, and that these practices are strongly discouraged. Legal issues to consider include plagiarism and copyright, thus accurate referencing for material, images and links needs to be provided. Finally, since there is a basic assumption that all wiki participants are contributing with the right intentions, students need to be aware of the etiquette that supports this notion.

During my participation in the Week 2 mobile phones wiki, I found our group to be extremely supportive and considerate of each other. While there was quite a lot of duplication of ideas, there was also a lot of encouragement and people didn’t seem to be deleting others’ responses simply due to their repetitive nature. I feel this was very appropriate under the circumstances, as not one of us would like to have spent time contributing our ideas only to find they had disappeared altogether at a later date, and our ‘voice’ removed from the topic (especially as it was part of an assessment task!). Also, the more times an idea was expressed, it gave the sense that this was an important and popular opinion/idea, and therefore worth being noted as indicative of collective consciousness on the matter. If duplications are to be removed from class wikis, some careful thought would have to be given as to the most appropriate way for this to occur, so as not to negatively affect self-esteem. Perhaps young children’s similar responses could just be grouped together, so that each continues to feel valued as a participant in the collaborative exercise, and their individual voices are still heard through class wikis.

The possibilities for working collaboratively and enriching learning outcomes through this unique way of working together in a collaborative manner, which appears to combine social constructivist and connectivist learning theories, are endless. 

The following link provides fifty examples of ways to use wikis in a collaborative and interactive classroom:

http://www.smartteaching.org/blog/2008/08/50-ways-to-use-wikis-for-a-more-collaborative-and-interactive-classroom/.

References:

Central Queensland University (n.d.). Working legally, safely and ethically online: the issues Retrieved November 5, 2012,  from 
http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/page/view.php?id=60623