Thank-you

Thanks to everyone for their help, patience, and overall participation in our task and the subject in general.
Cheers
chris gregory

Learning task report

Chris’ and Sean’s Wiki - Group Assignment on Ancient Egypt

Chris Gregory - 74679

www.chrisflea.pbwiki.com

INTRODUCTION

Wikis are an ideal platform for social interaction and collaboration because of the ability for anyone to edit and contribute content. Wikis are an online space that allows for collaborative authoring and sharing of ideas, a product that can then be shared and edited by all web users (Duffy & Bruns, 2006). Students can work together at different times without being in the same classroom or physical space. Of course they can also work together at the same time and in the same classroom if they choose. We chose a wiki task so that students could publish easily online without any background knowledge in HTML or web page authoring software. The wiki also allows for teachers and students to track contributions and to comment regularly on an evolving piece of work rather than wait for the final submission or draft. (Duffy & Bruns, 2006)

A problem with traditional assignments is that there is a strict teacher-student relationship, in that the student creates the work and then the teacher reads and marks it. Social software in particular wiki is a way that this can be avoided. Students can create a work that is shared and can be used as a reference for other students in their class or elsewhere around the world (Nachmias, Mioduser, Oren & Ram, 2000.) It was expected that by creating this wiki students could go beyond merely creating a poster for the classroom wall, giving a feeling of empowerment by having a forum for publication that could be accessed by anyone on the World Wide Web.

THE TASK

There initial set up of our wiki contained directions for students that included an overall outline of what was required of them for this task. When creating our task we began with a template for students to use where they would choose one of five areas regarding life in Ancient Egypt. Included in this basic setup was some basic navigation that linked to all five areas and then back to the main page. The rationale being that students can use the template provided as a layout or they may choose to take the wiki in any direction they desire. Control is given to students on how they want to develop the wiki and the direction the content and overall presentation will head. A section with feedback questions was included in the wiki specifically for other members of the FLE group who had attempted the task, so they could answer questions on their experiences completing our learning task. (see feedback questions at http://chrisflea.pbwiki.com/Reflection+Questions)

OUTCOMES

One of the main advantages that attracted us to using a Wiki as suggested by Duffy & Bruns (2006) and Boulos, Maramba & Wheeler (2006) was the ease of use in terms of the ability for all students to master the editing with little pre training. I found this to be true when setting up this task. I was able to create the template with no prior experience with developing or editing wikis, although I have previously had some training in the use of web design software. I found wikis to be a simplified version of this. We expected that students would be able to complete our wiki task with little prior knowledge of editing or using wikis. This was found to be the case for members of our FLE cohort, in his feedback Bill suggested that the task would indeed be able to be completed by students with little pre-training. Cathy on the other hand was not sure for secondary students but suggested training for all students to ensure that everyone would be able to complete the task.

We expected that access to our wiki would be unrestricted and that anyone would be able to edit or create new pages, perhaps needing to sign up and log in first (Forsyth, 2006.) While for most of the time people attempting our task were able to edit without hindrance there were times when members of the FLE group were unable to edit and post on the wiki without a password. This was unexpected as the wiki was intended to be fully public with no restrictions on editing. Due to this unforseen hurdle Bill had to send his feedback via email instead of posting and Melissa P was unable add a video into the geography section. While this proved a problem for our task in this instance it could be seen as a benefit in the future with secondary students completing a wiki publishing activity. Boulos, et al. (2006) and Wikipedia discuss the problem of students deleting or defacing others work on a wiki. However this is a problem with any form of publishing be it online or in hard copy. Bill reflected on this indicating ways of avoiding vandalism. This was inadvertently achieved in our task by the need for a password to edit. A protected wiki that only allows for invited group members to edit can be purchased, however this is likely to be a cost that teachers or schools would be reluctant to meet.

As suggested by the title “Ancient Egypt – Group Assignment” students were expected to be able to work collaboratively on this production. We found this to be true, evidenced by the ease that both Bill and Cathy were able to contribute very quickly to the overall product. Bill’s feedback agreed with this, he also commented on what he thought to be a suitable structure with a basic site and navigation set up allowing for some framework but also for students to take their wiki in whatever direction they chose.

When setting up this task we expected that teachers would be able to use our template as a guide to setting up their own wiki task for their students. Our feedback questions also asked whether FLE students felt that they would use this type of wiki task with their own students. Bill was very positive:

“I think the idea is great for certain topics… This would be ideal as each student’s page would be different … but altogether it would be one project. I really like the idea.(I)May even try it tomorrow.”

This endorsement suggested that it would indeed be a reasonable task that could easily be transferred and used by other teachers for other subject areas. While Cathy who teaches in a TAFE environment thought that this task would not as easily transfer to her subjects and students:

“I am engaged in teaching at TAFE level and the subjects I teach are predominantly practical “hands on” so a wiki is not something I would personally consider at the moment.”

Duffy & Bruns (2006) discuss the overall need for students to be taught authoring skills for wikis that may be different to other published work. Suggesting a need for general education in accepted language, structure and presentation techniques applicable to this format. We accomplished this in the beginning of the task with our template and task instructions that were found on the home page. In future development of this task further general instruction on research and publishing will be included as a separate page. Bill suggests that students may be tempted to just complete a ‘cut and paste job’. He believes that this in itself has a learning element with students finding relevant information from amongst the massive amount out there. Teaching the next step of putting into your own words information that you find would be beneficial for students to learn while they are creating their wiki.

CONCLUSION

Overall this task allows students to collaboratively publish information on Ancient Egypt. Generally this task was received positively and was seen to have a place in many areas of study for secondary students. There is a requirement for perhaps more instruction than was initially included in order for students to fully develop their wikis to the point where they are truly collaborating and using wiki as social software. Once basic skills are mastered this task does have the potential to empower students to create work that can be shared, edited and critically reviewed by peers and teachers for any one subject and in cross curriculum endeavours.

REFERENCES

Boulos, M.N.K., Maramba, I., & Wheeler, S. (2006). Wikis, blogs and podcasts: A new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education, BMC Medical Education, 6(41).

Retrieved 12^th June 2007 from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6920-6-41.pdf

Duffy, P., & Bruns, A. (2006) The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. In Proceedings Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, pages pp. 31-38, Brisbane. Retrieved 12^th June 2007 from: https://olt.qut.edu.au/udf/OLT2006/gen/static/papers/Duffy_OLT2006_paper.pdf

Forsyth, F. (2006). Wikis - The 1 page version. Retrieved: 10^th June 2007 from:

http://203.30.161.32/webx?13@959.6hVPa8N3bqx.0@.1add3ac3

Nachmias, R., Mioduser, D., Oren, A. & Ram, J. (2000) Web-Supported Emergent-Collaboration In Higher Education Courses - Educational Technology & Society 3(3)

Retrieved 12^th June 2007 from: http://ifets.massey.ac.nz/periodical/vol_3_2000/a05.html

Wikipedia:Vandalism Retrieved 12th June 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism

WEB 2.0

The web 2.0 is defintely here and providing a social platform for users to exchange and publish ideas. It seems like everywhere we turn there is some media recognition of the social, sharing nature of the web now. I know that this is not always positive, eg. fights at schools, illegal music/video sharing. However it is definitley out there and definitely the way of the now (and future) for publication and sharing of ideas. With the increase in availability of social software, education will get on board with students playing major parts in publication and sharing on the web. While a complete revolution of the classroom into an online one may be some time off, we can see the advantages for distance education, for those students who are sick and off from school/university. Instruction can be delivered and ideas shared, acknowledged, compared, criticised, disregarded in a timely and efficient manner. While I believe that school classrooms will not disappear and be taken over by a virtual high school I do believe that the power to learn accross the globe and interact with others everywhere will provide an engaging and fulfilling educational context for students in the very near future.

Getting there

I've now completed two tasks. I've tried to add all the elements that I could. All the tasks posted are interesting and engaging.
I also send my appreciation to the people who added to Sean and my wiki regarding Ancient Egypt. I can see that I have only scratched the surface on social software. Some of this stuff is going to be very useful and powerful in my teaching. I used to love having students creat simple web sites now I have extra tools that can be added to these to make a more rich publication. The power of what I saw as a simple tool the blog has been expressed. An blog enhanced with extra social software tools is remarkable as evidenced by Liang Soon's blog.
Thanks for all the participation from all members of the cohort especially given the lateness of my posting and the willingness of others to actively contribute.

Finally

Wow.
I can finally see what I have been missing out on. You tube vidoes explaining how to do things. This is great. Why couldn't I have done this a month ago.
Things are looking up, be it a little late.

Done - Melissa's task

Finally I have been able to sign in and edit Melissa's Periodic Table task.
I can't believe the run around that I had to do to be able to sign in to Wikispaces. This is definitely something that would deter me from using this particular wiki source.

Melissa Pang's Chemistry task

I think that I might finally be able to edit Melissa Pang's peridic table task. I am tearing my hair out, and I don't have that much available to tear. Hope that I am not too late and that I can be of assisstance to a fellow wiki task maker.