Monday, October 27, 2008
Wikis- Julie Bigham
I knew nothing about wikis before I started this class. In fact, I had used wikipedia often, but never questioned the name or what it was. After our first assignment using wikis, I tried to think of ways that I could use them in my media center setting. Initially, I thought that it would be neat to use a wiki along with the media center webpage. It is a ton of work, though, and so far, I haven't had time to set one up. Since we are working on pathfinders now, I think that a wiki could be used to allow people to access the pathfinders while in or out of school. Wikis could also be used for collaboration among media specialists from various schools and grades within a district. Currently, the media specialists in my county meet about 4 times per year, but with wikis, we could collaborate throughout the year without meeting face to face. The only issue would be making sure that everyone utilizes the wiki. Depending on the purpose for the wiki, various elements would need to be present in order to ensure that people would use them for collaboration. For example, in this class, holding students responsible for a certain number of postings and then grading those postings is one way to ensure collaboration. Also, having very specific guidelines as to the types of postings is necessary. I think that some people will be reluctant to use wikis because they are uncomfortable with technology, especially anything new.
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3 comments:
I completely agree that to get both students and other teachers to really use wikis or any other novel technology they are not comfortable with one must offer incentives. With students you can require the work, like you stated, and grade certain posts. However, teachers are a different story. Many teachers do not like anything new. They are in a comfort zone, and new technology is not an issue for them because they do not use it. These type of teachers need motivation, and often this is extrinsic motivation.
So the question remains, what can be offered to motivate teachers? Perhaps SDU's / PLU's or some other benefit from using and contributing to the wiki. Also, reduced meetings because people are meeting asynchronously on the wiki might be enticing. Wikis are fairly new and many teachers have not begun to even consider their possibilities. With the right incentives and motivation, teachers may try wikis and find that they can be quite useful. Hopefully when that occured, motivation would grow to be intrinsic.
I agree that any new technology it has to first be sold to the "consumer" who in this case would be the teachers/administrators. Given the time the media specialists could offer, once again a "how-to" class for interested teachers. I could possibly see how this could benefit select groups that meet on a regular basis or those who only met once a semester. With our busy schedules and limited timeframes a simple post at school or comfortably at home could take the place of an hour long meeting. I agree that there must be some strict ground rules about posting and trying to remain free of anyones personal opinion about the subject matter. Again, this would have to be sold to the teachers and used as a form of communication for a period of time before incorporating it into the lesson plan.
Julie, I am not familiar with pathfinders and would like to know more. I’m not sure what advantage a web page has over a wiki except that access to making changes to a web page can be restricted to the author of the page. Email or Yahoo messenger is another way of communicating without being physically present in the same place. However, I agree with you that a wiki would be superior to those methods of communication. The other idea you have about student groups doing projects using wikis is excellent. I had not considered that. I suppose their wikis would save old posts just like the one we use in class. That would ensure nobody’s stuff getting erased by a rival group! Paul
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