Monthly Archives: May 2004

Wikis in the classroom

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I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while since reading something on Will’s blog on the topic. I think wikis would be an interesting way for teachers to get students involved in Web publishing without needing to teach kids any HTML.

The best way to figure out what a wiki is would be to have a look at the mother of all wikis: Wikipedia. In particular, you can look at the wiki entry in the Wikipedia to get a good summary of the features of wikis. It boils down to this: a wiki is a free-for-all Web space where anyone can edit anything. It sounds chaotic, but it turns out that wikis also catalog all changes which means that an act of wiki-vandalism can be corrected easily by rolling back whatever changes were made. So do wikis have any educational use? I think so.

The easiest way to involve students with wikis would be to have them contribute to one of the many wikis that are already out there on the Internet. Wikipedia has articles that would fit with virtually every topic. Math, social studies, science, language arts/literature, and arts students, how about contributing something to an existing article or creating a new one to describe what you’ve learned in the past year? Other similar wikis include:

  • Wikibooks – a free source of textbooks developed by volunteer contributors
  • Wikitravel – a free travel guide

Either of these wikis would be a candidate for student contributions. What a great tool to teach students about the importance of proper citations, careful research, and appropriate writing styles.

The next step might be a classroom wiki where students could collaborate on projects or easily produce a Web site that chronicles their learning. When I was teaching, I would have loved a way for my students to create course-related Web sites without needing a full-blown lesson on HTML or Dreamweaver. These wiki sites are much more organic and free-form. There are literally dozens of free, open-source wiki implementations that could be installed on a school’s Web server. Some allow password-controlled access to the editing options. That might be a good option for a teacher who may be nervous about the wide open nature of a pure wiki.

21st Century skills

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We’ve talked quite a bit about 21st century skills in our district over the last year or so. It was an important component of the enGauge assessment that we did in January. I’ve got another professor on this panel. Joan Hughes is my advisor at the U. in addition to being the other co-director of the STLI program with Scott McLeod.

We’re starting with a discussion of what constitutes 21st century skills. There’s a list at NCREL’s site, but the discussion here is more general. Each panelist is sharing their own ideas about 21st century skills.

One suggestion from the panel is that learners need to be able to be flexible and learn to deal with different authors’ perspectives and biases. The 21st century, with the accompanying pace of change, requires learners to be agile.

Now the discussion has turned issue of practice. That is, why, when we recognize that teaching with technology is not an “if” but a “how,” is technology still not being used effectively except in rare instances. One panelists suggests that technology needs to be used in pursuit of a specific academic goal. Joan says that one problem is the lack of focus from the highest level. Innovation is happening in pockets and isn’t being coordinated at the state or federal departments of education.

Joan is now addressing an issue that’s been bugging me lately. How do we make informed technology purchasing decisions? She recommends using an RFP-style process that would encourage teachers and administrators to think more carefully about how the technology will actually get used and whether or not will will perform as advertised. Of course, it’s difficult to know in advance sometimes, but she also suggests that teachers should be encouraged to experiment a bit before making a big purchase.

Sharing Courses and Learning Objects

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Here’s another panel discussion. The topic has to do with getting traditional learning methods and materials (learning objects…sort of) converted and available online. A learning object is discrete, reusable, and is associated with metadata so that other can search and find it.

A question was raised about intellectual property concerns related to sharing learning objects. Some higher ed faculty can be reluctant to develop online materials because some of them fear that the move toward online learning may make them obsolete. One panelist commented that he believed that eventually the IP issues would be resolved as the model moves toward the traditional publishing world. The book publishing world has figured this out.

There’s an interesting discussion here about what might motivate teachers to develop learning objects if they can’t get the IP rights to what they develop. I don’t think this is a particularly new issue, it’s just the ease of publishing and distributing electronic materials that’s creating this buzz. Someone mentioned Creative Commons licensing. I’ve been promoting this concept here, and I’m waiting to hear for sure whether the materials I’ve developed can be licensed using the Creative Commons model.

Online professional development

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I’m at the Minnesota e-Learning Summit today and will be posting my notes from the various sessions here. The first one is a panel discussion about online professional development.

Scott McLeod is here. He’s a professor of mine and is co-director of the STLI project at the U. of Minnesota.

A panelist is talking about professional development as a means to develop the educator as a professional. This may seem obvious, but professional development often takes on a skill focus that doesn’t necessarily promote professional competencies.

The moderator just asked the panelists to comment on their experience in bulding online learning communities. A couple points:

  • You have to have a “show and tell” and give people an opportunity to show others what they’re doing.
  • Build a “community of practice” and not merely a list of courses.
  • Tranmission of content depends on the development of a supportive learning environment. This doesn’t change whether you’re teaching online or not. Online educators need to adapt to a different way of interacting with students without the visual cues that you find in a face-to-face environment.
  • An interesting book called the The Social Life of Information was recommended. The book talks about building communities of practice.