Project Wiki

"One of the great challenges of the knowledge management field is sharing tacit knowledge in a way that passes it along to others or even converts it into something like explicit knowledge" (Sheehy)

A wiki what?
-wikis are a collaborative writing space that is created and edited by a community of users
-wikis are presented as an almost blank canvas where content is added online
-wiki users are responsible for the wiki’s creation, direction, and maintenance over time
-wikis have very simple formatting rules to eliminate the need for HTML or other technical know-how, allowing a variety of users to contribute
-wikis often use many internal links to allow the user to move from one wiki page to another
(Saxton)

Why do I need to learn about the wiki?
-teachers are generally isolated from colleagues, working in a separate classroom with separate students teaching separate lessons, often totally unaware of what any other teacher is doing translation: as teachers we do our own thing in our classrooms
-ironically, all the teachers—not just the pockets of collaborators— are working toward the same goal; but they work essentially separately from one another
translation: whether we like it or not, we strive for the same outcome even if we do our own thing in the classroom (Sheehy)

Why the wiki and not another techy thingy?
-the online aspect of the wikis allow teachers to work anytime they liked and even synchronously on the site (if they were working on separate pages)
translation: wikis are flexible, it's available when you are ready to use it
-wikis provide an informal and customizable environment, with discussion boards attached to each wiki page and the style and content of the wiki left up to the whim of the creators—characteristics that extended the possibilities of conversation and left open the possible uses teachers might develop for the site
translation: wikis will be whatever you want it be, you are in control (Sheehy)

Are you a wiki believer yet?
Many experts say we learn best in our youth. Why is that? We tend to get "stuck" in our own ways. That's how I learned it and I'm sticking to it. If it ain't broke "why fix it"? It's difficult to introduce new ideas to those with this mentality. Sure, it isn't broken, but it can be better, more efficient, more meaningful. Isn't that what we're supposed to do as educators? Not be a broken record, but to find the best possible method to convey this knowledge to our students for them to understand?

Change, change, change; change is good...

Times are a'changing and so should we. As teachers, it's not necessarily true anymore for us to "know the right answer". We are facilitators of knowledge. There is so much knowledge out there in the World Wide Web and the world is constantly changing and developing that it is fully possible that we don't know everything! So, we need to teach our students how to find the information they need. And to make sure it is the "accurate" information. How to critically think and analyze what they read. What better way to do this than to have them create wiki pages in groups? Let them demonstrate their learning of the materials and have hands on experience in the online collaboration phenomenon.

Fine, you've got my attention, but make it quick, I'm a busy person.

Fair enough, but I just want to emphasize that wikis are super user-friendly. If you know how to use MS Word. You can use a wiki.

Preface

Sheryl will continue her development in the wiki she started earlier.

Part One

First, watch this video about wikis from common craft.

Then, I would encourage the staff to "play" with the wiki that I created for my English class . Their homework would be to think about how we could integrate wikis in our school community. (All of this would take about 10-20 mins and this could be done from their own computer anywhere!)

Part Two

Discuss the possible integrations of wikis in the school community and discuss the benefits of using it as a new tool.

Possible ideas:

ProD: Our school has long term goals, such as how to integrate more writing across the curriculum or our most recent initiative is how to incorporate oral skills for all disciplines. Now the new school I am going to is a great starting ground since we are starting from ground zero. There will be one teacher for each subject and we only have 2 grades. One ESL program and BC Grade 10 program. Wiki pages will be great for each "department" to share what they want to do, what they are doing, what isn't working, etc regarding the oral development. Other teachers from other disciplines can browse and look through the other pages to see what they are doing in common or give suggestions on how to modify what they are doing for the other subjects, etc. The discussion option will facilitate in this as well as the pages. This great because everything will be on one page and there will not be "lost" reflections, notes, etc. Everyone can see everything and it is not for evaluative purposes. It is purely to help develop the oral language initiative.

Science and Social Studies 10. After teachers are comfortable with using a wiki. They can use it as a summary tool. SC 10 and SS 10 are cumulative courses. Students can be placed in groups and collaborate to review each chapter or concept and be responsible to create a wiki page for it.

Follow-up, expectations

Teachers would be expected to contribute to the wiki for the school's long term goals. But it is optional for whether or not they wish to use it in their classroom as well. Every school year each department needs to make goals about how they will achieve the long term goal and report what was or wasn't successful by the end of the year. By putting all this information in a wiki allows all the information to be available in one place.

Obstacles

It will definitely be hard to convince teachers to use wikis at first, but like I had mentioned before, it is a brand new school and no standards have been set yet. So, it's an excellent time to bring in uses such as the wiki. I think the key is to keep it simple. Don't make it seem like it's something huge and different that will change their life. Keeping a positive, upbeat, encouraging, and supportive attitude will have people more willing to open up. A tool, that will make life easier is what everyone wants, not a tool that adds more work ontop of their already busy lives and transitions in a new country!

I think the biggest obstacle isn't the resistance from the staff, but whether or not we can access wikis in China. (I will be going in depth about this in my final reflection blog.) However for now, many sites are blocked by the firewall that China has put up to filter out a lot of information from their citizens. It is quite frustrating for us. There are ways around it like proxy servers, however, these are not always the safest because your computer becomes vulnerable for other people to hack into. There isn't a whole lot we can do around this unless we create a similar concept like the wiki but put it on our school local server.

If we can use wikis in China, I would recommend wikispaces to my colleagues because they support using it in the K-12 classroom and make it safe for educators to use. Plus they are giving it away for free. Read more about it here.

Resources:
The Wiki as Knowledge Repository: Using a Wiki in a Community of Practice to Strengthen K-12 Education. By: Sheehy, Geoffrey. TechTrends: Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning, Nov2008, Vol. 52 Issue 6, p55-60

Information Tools: Using Blogs, RSS, and Wikis As Professional Resources. By: Saxton, Beth. Young Adult Library Services, Winter2008, Vol. 6 Issue 2, p27-29

Collaborative Learning the Wiki Way. By: Engstrom, Mary E.; Jewett, Dusty. TechTrends:
Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning, v49 n6 p12-16 Nov-Dec 2005

Wikis

What I know is What You know
Working together to share knowledge has never been easier. Wikis allow anyone or only members or certain people you allow to edit and add to your pages. You can also set the viewer settings on your pages to be public, private, etc.

Please forgive my wickiedness...
The most common wiki would be Wikipedia. It's a wonderful wealth of knowledge. So many experts maintain the pages as well as contribute to it. I'd have I was wrong with what I was teaching my students about Wikipedia this past year. As you already know, I was only training to be a teacher-librarian this year. I was teaching my English 12 class about which online resources are reliable sources. A veteran English 12 teacher of 15 years advised me to make sure that I tell my students that Wikipedia is not a legitimate resource because in the past she has edited the pages with wrong information to prove a point to her students about how it is not reliable because anyone can edit the information. She said it took about 2-3 weeks before someone found that information. With her experience so much greater than mine and it was only my first year of teaching English 12, I passed on this information to my students.

Now that I have learned more about Wikipedia, I would have to change my mind about it. I think it is a reliable source. I think the key is... the information was corrected in the end. Plus there are so many wiki entries that not every page will have an error. Even then, our students should be using more than one source to confirm the information they are retrieving. So, I think it's a great place to start for students to gain background knowledge of their research topics. I also like the language level used on the sites and I think my students enjoy it as well because it's user friendly and my ESL/EFL students can understand it.

My Wiki: http://mapleleaflibraryskills.wikispaces.com/

Picking which wiki to use was quite simple with the help of wikimatrix which compares many different wikis' services. I picked the one that offered the most for K-12 Educators. I like the idea of being able to create 100 new wiki users for my students.

A Wiki? So what? I've seen it all before!
When I was going through my wiki tutorials, I had my doubts... How is this different from a blog? I am adding information on this page, adding links, etc... I guess the key was other could edit this page. Then I asked myself how is this different from Google Docs? Google Docs allows you to share pages with users as well. Perhaps it's the idea that it can be public? As I worked more with the pages, I realized that the navigation and how every page is connected to the main page is what makes wikis great. The layout is simple and similar to a blog. So, it was easy to navigate through the options, select my settings etc. I did have troubles with the navigation bar. I created a page for "Common Online Research Skills" at first. Then I created a second page called "What's a Research Paper?" I wanted the second page I created to be first in the navigation bar but it didn't give me a lot of options to move it around, so, I deleted the first page so that the second page could be first.

I do have one issue with online text editors and typing... I don't like how the formatting and editing online often is wrong or it lags. So, I found it easier to create my page from MS Word first and then paste it into the wiki page. Perhaps this is cheating and obvious not possible when you are editing a page that already exists, but presentation is important. I think a clear and simple look invites a reader to continue reading and they are not having troubles with following with the information because it's clustered or unaligned, etc.

Wiki Uses
Many teachers have used wikis in different forms:

Example#1: creating wiki pages about grammar conventions, so students are responsible for their own learning. (The Grammatically Correct Wiki. By: Bomar, Shannon. Knowledge Quest, Mar/Apr2009, Vol. 37 Issue 4, p51-51)

Example#2: "Wiki forums can be used for group work, writing, fact-checking, and proofreading" "[A]nd the use of wikis to teach critical faculties, such as how different views on issues can arrive on a consensus." (Wiki man. By: Norrington, Alison; Manning, Stephen. Times Educational Supplement, 3/30/2007 Issue 4730, special section p58-59)

Example#3: Use wikis to collaborate ideas and experience learning in a community for news writing as well as revisions.
(News writing using wiki: impacts on learning experience of student journalists. By: Ma, Will W. K.; Yuen, Allan H. K.. Educational Media International, Dec2008, Vol. 45 Issue 4, p295-309)

What's the GCD (greatest common denomenator)?
"[T]hat the core principle of wikis is collaboration. Once you start, you will wonder how you ever lived without one. (A Wiki for Classroom Writing. By: Morgan, Brian; Smith, Richard D.. Reading Teacher, Sep2008, Vol. 62 Issue 1, p80-82)

I would have to agree that collaboration is the key. This past year I have been very keen on peer editing with my grade 12s. It's quite the puzzle that my student get 90 - 100% correct on grammar skills exercises; however, when it comes to their writing it is littered with grammar errors that they were able to correct on a worksheet. So, I recreated my peer editing checklists to look like a grammar worksheet and my student work through each step when they are peer editing and I found this very successful. However, now that our provincial exams are e-exams, we often write on the computer for practice and students trade laptops to edit work and often students have different version of Word programs etc. which then half the time students are learning how to use the different function keys. Plus, there is a lot of email to me so, I can review the edits. This is a wonderful solution becuase everything is already here!

I also think wikis are a great place for students to collect the information and record their links on here. When students peer edit their work, then can click on the links and know exactly what and where the student author got their source from. Student editors can also comment on whether or not they agree that it is a reliable source to use in their paper or perhaps even suggest other ones to use.

I chose my wiki to be about Library skills because I think this is a great way to collaborate about these skills. My students have zero prior training about libraries and research skills. I don't think it's effective for only me to post information about these skills. I think it would be more effective for students who actually understand what their peers have most difficulties with abou these skills to put it in terms of student understanding. Other teachers may also notice or discover some helpful writing tips or techniques that can be added to the pages for sharing ideas and nothing will be lost because it's all collected on one page. Instead of random email messages or post-its everywhere.

Warning
"It is recommended that instructors provide highly supportive learning experiences to teach students how to use wikis and how to work collaboratively when implementing wikis to maximize the benefits of this emerging tool. " (Building a Networked Environment in Wikis: The Evolving Phases of Collaborative Learning in a Wikibook Project. By: Lin, Hong; Kelsey, Kathleen D.. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 2009, Vol. 40 Issue 2, p145-169).

Like everything else, we would have to scaffold our students about what collaboration is, waht does it look like, how to do it, etc. before they try it. And even then, additional lessons about working together may need to be strengthened. We might even have to teach them to respect different perspectives and only edit what is necessary not because you disagree or don't like something. Any other tips about how to teach online collaboration?