Very interesting session today. As with many topics covered with "23 Things", my paradigms are shifting. As so well put in Lee LeFever's video "Wikis in Plain English", wikis offer a revolutionary way to work on team projects. I am so used to sending documents out to others as an attachment to an email that then gets modified and updated to get to a final draft document. Everyone is always retitling the document so we know which one is the latest version. Editing, saving, and linking at one location where others can meet to create and provide input is great.
As evidenced by the various wiki links that were offered for browsing, wikis definitely provide forums for all interested parties both to participate in the creation and benefit from sharing of information. I found, as an observer of these wikis, that they were very informative and showed many different variations of how a wiki can be utilized.
The wikis that were collaborative projects between schools in very different parts of the world were of particular interest to me. Sites such as Comparing Hemispheres, Welker's Wikinomics and Flat Planet and even Arbor Heights Elementary School all expanded not only students' knowledge on a given subject but also engaged exposing students to different perspectives. This is particularly true when engaging participants in other cultures and geographic locations. Learning has been so much more meaningful when there is a way to personalize the learning, and wikis definitely offer a way of personalization when individuals have a way to be directly involved.
The educational wikis website was a little overwhelming with the breadth of wikis available. Ensuring accuracy of information located in these wikis is one of the main areas that need to be verified or at least kept in perspective as you are engaged in any given wiki. Limiting access to editing of a wiki would be one way of improving the integrity of information within a given wiki. Viewing wikis as a collaborative experience where one is able to interact and enrich one's perspective is one way to not necessarily view information as being explicitly factual. Creating a board of reviews like Wikipedia does would be a difficult control process I would think for the standard wiki developer.
I could see how wikis could be utilized for staff/professional development in my various schools as well as for various administrative projects within my support department of communication disorders. Once a group of individuals is oriented as to how to utilize a wiki, I believe it would be useful. I look forward to creating a wiki for a project in early 2010 to create a more effective, efficient and better overall project. Gregory Jacoby
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment