Wikispaces for Student and Teacher Spaces

A wiki.  What is it?  There is no single definition or description of what a wiki is, but it comes from the Hawaiian phrase 'wiki wiki' which means to hurry.  Franklin and Van Harmelen (2007, p.5) define a wiki as 'a system that allows one or more people to build up a corpus of knowledge in a set of interlinked web pages, using a process of creating and editing pages' (p.5).  The use of the most well-known wiki, Wikipedia, within education can be a contentious issue due to the ability for anyone to edit the pages.  However this 'issue' (if you view it as such) can be overcome as there are various wiki websites available that allow for restrictions on who can access, view, or contribute to the wiki.  Wikispaces is one example of such a wiki being used in education.  

Wikispaces is a free (for educational purposes) wiki host that can provide a private or public (whatever you want!) space on the internet for use in the classroom or indeed with other teachers to share and discuss practice.  From my own experience of wikispaces, there are pros and cons to using it.  I have outlined some of these below.  Overall, I find wikispaces very useful in that the layout is simple and it is relatively straightforward to figure out.  If you have never used a wiki before, but might be interested, I would certainly recommend trying it out.

Pros

• You can name the wikispace whatever you want (as long as the url is not already in use) and so it can be named something that is unique to the group you are setting up.
•  Content is easy to organise.  Any pages that are created can be organised under common folder tags, e.g., pages related to the topic of Light can all be given the tag 'Light' and will appear in that folder.  You can add hyperlinks to other pages within the wikispace or links to pages elsewhere on the internet.  This is particularly useful when the aim is to keep the focus on the text without simply collecting a list of websites.  Many other things can be embedded on the pages such as images, video clips, and links to uploaded files, etc.
•  There are various colour schemes and different layouts for the wikispace, so the wikispace can be given a look and feel that reflects its content.
•  Changes are tracked so you can see who has made changes, when, and where.  Particular pages of interest can be followed so that you receive e-mail notifications if changes are made to these pages.  You can also view how many people have visited the webpages to get an idea of peoples' use of the wiki.

Cons

• The wikispace pages do not support landscape view.  Excel Sheets or Google docs can be embedded within a wiki but, it would be quite useful if a wiki page did not have to align with a traditional view of a page in a textbook.  Albion (2008) notes that we tend to recreate older social forms of organisation in new technologies and not supporting landscape pages on wikispaces is such an example.
• When downloading PDFs of pages, the text does not appear on some PDFs or appears too small.  This issue with text can be particularly prevalent on pages that have tables on them.  Not being able to download material from the wiki diminishes the value of the wiki. 

References
-Albion, P. R. (2008). Web 2.0 in Teacher Education: Two Imperatives for Action. Computers in the Schools, 25(3-4), 181-198.
-Franklin, T., & Van Harmelen, M. (2007). Web 2.0 for content for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Bristol: JISC. Retrieved from: http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/148/1/web2-content-learning-and-teaching.pdf.

  

Embracing the Twit(ter) in Education

Wondering if Twitter has any real value in education?  If you are reading this blog, you probably use Twitter already, but here is to just in case.  Twitter has educational value depending on how you decide to use it and if you are willing to invest the time to engage in it.  Twitter is a useful learning tool for teachers, for students, and as a medium through which teachers and students can have shared learning spaces that go beyond the physical walls of the classroom.

Things I find Twitter useful for are:
1. Following people who have similar interests that I can share and receive useful information from.  If you feel there is an information overload from the number of tweets, you can create lists to filter what information you want to see.
2. Having conversations following certain hashtags.  You could talk about education 24/7 on Twitter if you followed all the various education hashtags!
3. Complementing the use of other social media such as blogs, Pinterest, wikis, LinkedIN, Google+, and Facebook.

On a broader level, from analysing the tweets of 45 higher education academics who had over 2000 followers on Twitter, Veletsianos (2011, p.1) found seven different ways academics used Twitter.  Academics who used Twitter:

'1. shared information, resources, and media relating to their professional practice;

 2. shared information about their classroom and their students;

 3.  requested assistance from and offered suggestions to others;

 4. engaged in social commentary;

 5. engaged in digital identity and impression management;

 6. sought to network and make connections with others; and

 7. highlighted their participation in online networks other than Twitter'.

In terms of Twitter as a medium through which teachers and students interact (with each other and potentially a wider audience), there are many strategies that can be adopted.  The following two links highlight 50 ways to use Twitter in the Classroom and  50 ways to use Twitter in the College Classroom.

Now can you say that Twitter has no value in education?


Reference:
Veletsianos, G. (2011). Higher education scholars' participation and practices on Twitter. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning.