Wikis

This week we have been diving into the world of wikis and their role in collective intelligence. Collective intelligence is based on the theory of social constructivism which we discussed last week and a great example of an online version of collective intelligence is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a website where anyone can add or change information about almost topic. The premise of this site is to encourage users to add and change information by consistently building onto one another’s ideas. The theory is that this information would not be attained if it wasn’t for the collective thoughts and aptitudes of all contributing users. Although this idea is innovative and great by theory there is one major downfall, not all contributions are factual, leading to scepticism when referencing this site.

There are many advantages of Wikipedia despite it being banned in schools and Universities. I particularly liked the UTUBE video clip from this week’s readings (http://henryjenkins.org/2010/02/_children_and_young_people.html) where Henry Jenkins states, “students are learning more outside of school these day then in”. Programs like Facebook, Myspace Wikipedia etc are discouraged and banned from use inside schools however these are the programs used by the young generation of digital natives to seek out new content and socialise with people. Henry Jenkins states ‘the internet is based on collective intelligence’. Students should be encouraged to access these forums to continually discover, debate and build on their prior knowledge.
Exposing students to Wikipedia is a lesson in itself. Not only does it give students a starting point for locating information but it also teaches students about ‘information literacy’. In the article From Blogs to Bombs: The future of digital technologies in education, Mark Pegrum describes information literacy as the skills used to evaluate the origins, authorship, history, accuracy, objectivity, completeness, currency and relevance of digital documents and to compare and cross reference them with other digital sources. Information literacy is an essential tool that all internet users need to poses.

Overall I think teachers a wary of using wikis such as Wikipedia to gain information but it is important to expose students to these sites not only to access and build information but to teach students to be critical of the internet. I believe that teachers are uneducated when it comes to technology and would prefer to shy away from it rather than embrace it (faults and all). I personally think setting up a Wiki in a classroom setting would be a create way of running a social constructivism class where students can build onto one another’s ideas, give feedback to each other and discuss topics in more depth. However saying this, teacher monitoring would have to occur in all stages to ensure students stayed on track and no cyber bullying occurred.

Constructivist Learning Using Technology

Over the past few weeks I have been spending some time in a Year One class and am amazed at how they incorporate technology into almost every lesson. At the beginning of the 'Teaching with New Technologies' course I was skeptical of the notion of normalisation and believed that even in our generation as teachers technology would not be used in everyday lessons in an everyday classroom. I thought that older years would be using computers to type and research (Web1.0)but had no idea year one's would incorporate smart boards and computers in most lessons.

This brings me to my second point, the benefits of integrating technology in web2.0 format in constructivist lessons. Constructivist see that learning results from accommodation of new ideas and using Web2.0 is a fantastic way to fuel discussion and deeper investigation on certain topics. It requires students to think and brainstorm ideas and react with other students opinions. It is important though from a constructivist's prospective for ideas to be carefully selected and sequenced to provoke appropriate perturbations in students thinking, therefore teachers must be constantly monitoring and directing information to ensure students are working in their zone of proximal development.

My First Blog!

I'm extremely excited to have my very own blog! I've read a lot of blogs over the years and can't wait to get started documenting my learning in 'Teaching With Technologies' this semester. Please feel free to comment and give me any advice you have.

Regards
Michelle