From my readings and learning activities in this course, it is evident that the educational power of WIKIs resides primarily in their capabilities for collaborative group work.
With that said, here are some questions for my followers to ponder...... do YOU consider WIKIs the ultimate tool for democratic knowledge creation - a place where students can write, edit, negotiate and create a storehouse of knowledge and collaborate on projects or... will the challenges associated with content management deter their use in your classroom?
Does the potential for student miss-use and editing issues concern you at all? Should we be giving students free rein with this technology? Will our use of this ICT be a matter of student maturity and teacher instruction?
It is my view that the tremendous collaboration and learning opportunities offered by WIKIs are too great for editorial concerns to prevent student use. I have included some thoughts below and ways in which 'easy edit' challenges can be overcome.
The open source nature of WIKIs lends them to potential vandalism and miss-use (by both students and third parties). To alleviate these concerns, teachers could choose to restrict WIKI access to only their students and administer the site – monitoring the content and edits. However, as Richardson (2006, pp. 64-65) notes, “giving students editorial control can imbue in them a sense of responsibility and ownership for the site and minimize the risk of someone adding something offensive.”
In the pursuit of knowledge creation and collaboration, teachers may therefore choose to empower their students with the responsibility for editorial control. I feel that in an information–rich world where digital literacy, knowledge and collaboration skills are becoming increasingly important, this approach would be beneficial for students. It would teach them to be critical of the content they (and others) write and edit on the WIKI – affording opportunities for students to negotiate with other collaborators in relation to the content published and to extend and refine their knowledge (DoL 3) through analysis, as they consider the relevance and accuracy of content (Marzano et al., 2009).
Does the potential for student miss-use and editing issues concern you at all? Should we be giving students free rein with this technology? Will our use of this ICT be a matter of student maturity and teacher instruction?
It is my view that the tremendous collaboration and learning opportunities offered by WIKIs are too great for editorial concerns to prevent student use. I have included some thoughts below and ways in which 'easy edit' challenges can be overcome.
The open source nature of WIKIs lends them to potential vandalism and miss-use (by both students and third parties). To alleviate these concerns, teachers could choose to restrict WIKI access to only their students and administer the site – monitoring the content and edits. However, as Richardson (2006, pp. 64-65) notes, “giving students editorial control can imbue in them a sense of responsibility and ownership for the site and minimize the risk of someone adding something offensive.”
In the pursuit of knowledge creation and collaboration, teachers may therefore choose to empower their students with the responsibility for editorial control. I feel that in an information–rich world where digital literacy, knowledge and collaboration skills are becoming increasingly important, this approach would be beneficial for students. It would teach them to be critical of the content they (and others) write and edit on the WIKI – affording opportunities for students to negotiate with other collaborators in relation to the content published and to extend and refine their knowledge (DoL 3) through analysis, as they consider the relevance and accuracy of content (Marzano et al., 2009).
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