Activity 10.1 - Part 1 - Wikis and second language learning: What's all the fuss?

Wikis and second language learning: What's all the fuss?

There is currently a lot of interest in wikis for educational purposes. What is a wiki? Is this interest valid? What is all the excitement about? A review of current literature suggests the following general reasons for this interest and its relevance to students.

A wiki is essentially a website that

• is easy to create, easy to author, easy to use (like an online virtual word processor) .. thus students of almost any age can help build
• supports dynamic content; this can come in many different digital forms (not just text but pictures, slide shows, audio and video as well) all of which can be added, arranged, edited, reviewed and commented upon by some, any, or all students ..
• promotes reflection, review and revision of one's work; ..individual students can find, filter and assemble digital content that reflects their interest, and understanding of a class assignment .. and review, revise it if their ideas or understanding of concepts change as a result of interactions with their peers
• promotes collaboration with peers .. thus students can not only share their own understanding of a project but review the work of their peers to then learn from one another, negotiate understanding, collectively construct meaning and then work as a group to collate this work and then present it as a finished group presentation
• promotes tracking of development .. students can view a history of the wiki's revisions to track what revisions were made, when and by whom .. to make comparisons between iterations .. and track their development / learning
• is free and accessibile 24/7 .. thus students can work individually or as groups at home or at college
• can be made available to a real audience .. thus students can opt to present their finished presentations so that they can be shared with a real audience whether that be the class, the school, the region, the world AND invite that audience's reviews and comments

(video)


A TV like commercial for why an educator might want to use a wiki. (alwaygolf, 2007)
Duration - 1:12 min

Sources

alwaygolf (2007) ‘Teaching with WIKI’, YouTube, [online] Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&v=mdOKUeT0O-o (Accessed 15 January 2009).

Activity 9.1. - Desktop research - blogging in education (report)

Sources

Buckingham, Jim ‘H808 - My notes’, blog, [online] Available from: http://buckinsand.blogspot.com/ (Accessed 5 January 2009).

Chandler, Jeff (2008) ‘WordPress Forum User Guide ’, Weblog Tools Collection, blog, [online] Available from: http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/12/24/wordpress-forum-user-guide/ (Accessed 5 January 2009).

Crawford, Justin ‘The Campus Press Blogs ’, Educause Learning Initiative, [online] Available from: http://www.educause.edu/ELI/ELIDiscoveryToolGuidetoBloggin/TheCampusPressBlogs/13563 (Accessed 5 January 2009).

Educause (n.d.) ‘What Faculty Want to Know ’, Educause Learning Initiative, [online] Available from: http://www.educause.edu/ELI/ELIDiscoveryToolGuidetoBloggin/WhatFacultyWanttoKnow/13566 (Accessed 5 January 2009).

GeoBlogs ‘Google Earth Users Guide Project’, blog, [online] Available from: http://googlearthusersguide.blogspot.com/ (Accessed 5 January 2009).

Peachey, Nik ‘Nik's Learning Technology Blog’, blog, [online] Available from: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/ (Accessed 5 January 2009).

Stevens, Vance ‘adVancEducation’, blog, [online] Available from: http://advanceducation.blogspot.com/ (Accessed 5 January 2009).

Various ‘UMW Blogs’, blog, [online] Available from: http://umwblogs.org/ (Accessed 1 January 2009).

Various ‘Zotero: The Next-Generation Research Tool’, blog, [online] Available from: http://www.zotero.org/blog/ (Accessed 5 January 2009).

Weller, Martin (2008) ‘Blogging isn't about fame’, The Ed Techie, [online] Available from: http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2008/12/blogging-isnt-about-fame.html (Accessed 5 January 2009).

Categories are

1. subject domain / topic
2. professional reflections
3. personal reflections
4. student reflections
5. community building / sharing
6. utility - how to do

For each category, I provide

• a short description
• an example or two to help illustrate it
• comment on some of the main issues that arise from using blogs in this way

subject domain / topic

These are blogs that choose to focus on a specific subject domain in education or educational topic. There were many examples to choose from - mathematics, economics as well as English composition or literature. Most notable for me were these two and their work in promoting the critical use of technology in EFL instruction.

Nik Peachey's "Nik's Learning Technology Blog" and Vance Steven's ‘adVancEducation’, blog, both examine educational technology issues that they have personally encountered in their work context as EFL instructors in differing parts of the world. Peachey (Morocco) examines readily available specific technologies or web based tools and examines how how they might be used by educators. He also offers step by step guidelines on how to realize them. Notably absent? Comments from readers. Peachey's work tends to be more "how to" focussed.

Stevens (UAE) tends to place research work that was done to support various conference presentations, on his blog for broader review from readers. However, he also includes interesting annecdotal and reflective review of his experiences or encounters at these same conferences. Steven's work tends to examine an assortment of issues related to exploring the use of a given technology.

professional reflections

Here a professional uses their blog as a place to put out a plea for review, inviting open dialogue from a community of similar professionals to have their ideas tested and challenged.

Martin Weller's ‘Blogging isn't about fame’, demonstrates this sort of dialogue or engagement with a broader audience who take him to task on his earlier pronouncement on the value of technocrati ratings. He uses this post to clarify what he meant .. such ratings act as a "very rough proxy" of how well one is communicating one's ideas.

Stevens, Vance ‘adVancEducation’, blog, also invites the same. However, because the typical blog entry is fairly short (and typically needs to be to invite readership).. it appears to be somewhat problematic when attempting to discuss or present very detailed or complex issues

personal reflections

Finding these is problematic because they are often hidden from view. However, I know they exist because I and many of my colleagues have asked students to create them. I suspect that these make up the bulk of the many millions of blogs spoken of in literature on blogging. Here students can practice free writing, journalling and sharing their ideas with a select group of trusted friends or even instructors. Are they educational? They have the potential to be .. even if they invite personal reflection from the writer and are done outside of a structured formal education setting.

student reflections

Very similar to personal reflections however these tend to be more project or goal based. For example, all of the blogs for H808 are in most cases compiled based on the various activities assigned in the course. These tend to be more academic based reflections.

My own H808 - notes blog is but one example of this.

A few issues raised here? Educause writers note that some critiques argue instructors may be robbing the exercise of pleasure and purpose the moment they are made compulsory. Others express concerns about protecting student privacy , how to assess such developmental work, and where to host such services to protect students still in development.

community building / sharing

Blogs or often an aggregation of blogs and their ability to provide constantly dynamic content can be used as a form of community building or informing tool in an educational setting. More and more examples of this are emerging in college or university contexts and often employing communications students.

A blog set up by the University of Mary Washington is actually a collection of blogs made by various communities found within the broader university community. Justin Crawford's own reflective piece on the origins of just such a blog press and the unexpected problems it encountered are mentioned in yet another article.

utility - how to do

Many online user manuals that have been drawn up to support web based utilities, are blogs. This is especially useful when a product is either still evolving or experiencing "bugs". Updates can be noted and made immediately available to users via RSS feeds. The new users can also comment on these updates thus realizing feedback for program developers to help improve their product. In other words, the blog becomes a user manual that has been tried, tested and written by users.

Zotero is an open source product that used a blog to announce updates, solicit reviews of those updates, etc.

Another borderline example is the "Google Earth Users Guide Project". It borders on being a Geography related (topic based) blog but provides readers with ideas and instructions on ways in which Google Earth can be used in education.

Still another is Chandler, Jeff Chandler's work on a ‘WordPress Forum User Guide ’, and the reaction from end users to it.

Reflections - Activity 9.1. - Desktop research

Sources

Edublogs (n.d.) ‘Edublogs - teacher and student blogs’, [online] Available from: http://edublogs.org/ (Accessed 4 January 2009).

Online Education Database (2006) ‘Top 100 Education Blogs | OEDb’, [online] Available from: http://oedb.org/library/features/top-100-education-blogs (Accessed 4 January 2009).

Technorati (n.d.) ‘education: Blogs, Photos, Videos and more on Technorati’, [online] Available from: http://technorati.com/blogs/tag/education (Accessed 4 January 2009).

This has been no small task.

I have spent over 7 hours reviewing blogs in education - never thought I could do it but I did. Over that time, one thing has become blatantly apparent - blogs are being used for any subject, topic, issue imaginable thus any attempt to categorize them at all seems an exercise in futility. The fact that technocrati tagged over 35,000 blogs about education, and edublogs ,which specializes in providing blogs for educators, notes how they now support over 260,000 blogs means that even if I limit my review to the results of their screening, my attempts again seem futile. The OEDb vainly attempts to pare these down to a top 100 using 10 categories - not at all evenly divided I might add nor is there any hint about how they themselves have gone about selecting such sites.

Note too the difficulty in defining the term - "range of blog use in education". Education can be formal or informal. Education in the broadest sense, can take place almost anyplace and anytime. Even if we pare this down to formal education, we still are dealing with every topic and subtopic found in education being potentially dealt with in a blog. However, in an attempt to not write off the exercise entirely, I did begin to reflect on how I may have spent more time reviewing certain blogs then others. How I may have begun to see patterns emerge in reviewing and comparing various blogs - their content, their writing style, and their appearance. Thus my attempts to categorize blogs are predictably going to display a bias towards those I gravitated towards. Blogs are defined here as journals written usually (but as I have come to learn not always) by one author. I tended to focus on blogs about "blogs" and how they could be used in education.