Isn’t his all just information literacy? When we think about whether wikis are sound instructional practice, I have a few initial thoughts about their benefits and challenges:
Benefits -
- What a great opportunity to show students that our learning never ends and that “two heads are better than one?” Wikis definitely exemplify the need for editing, revision, and collaboration! Wikis provide the opportunity to continually revise. (If we aren’t using a wiki which provides a history of our edits, perhaps we should be teaching students to use the “save as” feature to record the versions of their work.
- Wikis can provide the authentic audience and purposes for our classroom projects. When students know that they are collaborating with other students (or experts) outside of their own classroom – their work becomes important!
- Information can be outdated! Wikipedia is an example of “up to the minute” information. Even print material is not always right!
- Sara Kajder shared at a TRLD Conference that our classroom assignments SHOULD be relevant, produce knowledge that “does something,” and serve an audience beyond the teacher. What a great example of this!
- I recently learned about Spark Notes – http://www.sparknotes.com When I was a student, we only had Cliff Notes, but now that our older students are beginning to use Spark Notes… this might be an opportunity to demonstrate that CliffNotes/SparkNotes are simply one person’s opinion/perspective on a text source. Wikis can be used to create “Class Notes” about a text that is being read. This provides alternative perspectives from other classes reading the same text. (There might actually be some substantive conversation as a result!)
Challenges:
- Students need to understand that everyone who contributes to a wiki is provided the opportunity to share their own opinions and that they are not necessarily experts!
- Wikis may be a great way to build a better understanding/background on a topic (thinking Wikipedia here), but they should not be used a primary source.
- There is still great debate about the accuracy of wikis (such as Wikipedia). Nature offered an interesting (and very controversial) study a few years ago to explore the accuracy of Wikipedia vs. Encyclopedia Britannica. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4840340.stm
- There is a great responsibility and pre-requisite to teach the information literacy skills necessary for students to understand HOW to evaluate information in order to use online information effectively.
Interesting Reads:
So, off I go into the blogsphere… The time has come to become a contributor to the greater good of the web and stop being simply a consumer. As the world made a shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 a few years ago, I joined the excitement and have had a great time learning about new *free* tools on the web. I have to admit, I have used more of them than I remember because not too many of them have actually “stuck” for me for an intended purpose. It has been fun to explore, to play, to think about how to use some of these tools, but I have to admit – - I am still a consumer. Yes, I do have my own delicious account (note that this is now commonplace and you no longer have to remember the proper spelling of del.icio.us in order to login). I use it for work and for home, but I have learned to “not share” many of the sites that I tag. After all, if I am sharing my account with co-workers, do I want all of my life “exposed” online?