I recall my principal returning from a conference excited about Wiki’s and that we as a staff were going to start using a PBwiki as a means to increase communication. What happened next is unfortunately what happens a lot to new technology. We were asked to log on and to participate. I am sure you can guess what happened; very few people accessed the Wiki and participated in a meaningful way and therefore it eventually disappeared.
I wish that my first experience was more successful. I give my Principal credit; she tried to introduce the staff to a new technology and tried to model its use. Unfortunately, she was learning as she went along and did not have a great Wiki to use as a model. Luckily for me, I am in a different situation. I am very impressed with the Wiki that I am using for my class, Teaching and Learning in a Networked Classroom, and I hope that I can create a Wiki that is as user friendly as this one is. I also have performed a search for Wikis and now have a better understanding of what works and what does not.
Once site in particular that I visited was titled Scientific Investigations. This Wiki was created using wetpaint and I was initially very impressed that the instructor created this Wiki for students to collaborated and create a lab report. By using the Wiki, the instructor knows exactly who contributed to the assignment and could easily monitor the changes made to the page. I think this is a very effective was to not only use a Wiki, but to solve a problem using the scientific process.
The downside of this Wiki was that there was only one experiment. All of the pages were edited during a one week period in 2008 and never revisited. A lot of the Wiki’s I looked at seemed to be abandoned as if they were used for one project or at the start of the semester and then left to fade away, similar to my first experience. I hope that I will not fall into that same trap when I create one for my class. I think the way to combat this issue is to try to use the Wiki frequently as a means on communication, not just for a singular assignment.
I have a Wiki question—what if two students are trying to edit the same page from two different locations at the same time? What happens? I feel that this is likely if I assign partners and for them to edit for homework.
Posts
Mark, I was interested in what you said about your principal introducing staff to Wikis, then no one using it. I come from a business background where administration would give us new technology and tell us to use it. We would learn it out of necessity to keep our jobs (and usually later on we were thankful we learned it as it improved our work). I'm always surprised that a school setting is so different than the business world. The administration brings a new idea and no one uses it. Is it possible for administration to require use of new technology? If teachers were "forced" to use it I think they would see the value in it down the road and I believe that students would benefit from a tech savvy staff.
ReplyDeleteMark,
ReplyDeleteI think that both pages will be edited, however whomever clicks "save" last will end up having their page updated.
To respond to Cheri--I think teachers can be their own worst enemy sometimes. When teachers constantly gripe that they don't have TIME to learn all these new technologies, they are wasting time complaining; this time could have been spent learning. I grimace to think of how many department meetings have been gripe sessions that were a total waste of time. Someone once said that being an administrator is like trying to herd cats--teachers are so independent and "rule the roost" in their classroom. This can be to a fault when an administrator tries to teach us something new. Anything mandatory is often griped about and ignored. passive/aggressive? I don't know what to do about teachers like that, but they are in every school I have ever worked in. In the business world that simply would not happen to the degree it does in schools. What to do?
ReplyDeleteFor clarification, I think that is was not used to its potential because of they way it way organized and the apparent lack of purpose. What we were trying to accomplish using a Wiki could have been done using other methods. I think some of the staff found this to be a turn off. Also... "no one" was an underestimate. It was used, but not nearly to its potential.
ReplyDelete