Wikis for Educators (And Educators for Wikis) (2008)

Flash Player 9 (or above) is needed to view presentations.
We have detected that you do not have it on your computer. To install it, go here.

more share options
Embed For WordPress.com

Without related presentations

Notes on slide 1

What a wiki is…

Why use wikis for teaching and learning

Where to access WikiLearn and what it consists of

How to get started using wiki learn

What is a wiki? Most of you probably have heard of wikis.

Wiki comes from wiki wiki, which means quick. We can therefore expect a wiki to be quick to learn, quick to use

… Wikipedia, of course, the online, publicly edited encyclopedia that is the major competitor with Encyclopedia Britannica.

A wiki is basically a web site, but one that has certain features…

… which have caused some to label it a “Web 2.0” service. This “tag cloud” shows major features of Web 2.0 apps, such as participation, convergence, reimxability… the most famous example of a wiki is…

Wikipedia is not the only important public wiki project…

Wikibooks is a place for authors to converge and collaborate on full works of fiction or non-fiction…

Wikieduactor, aimed primarily at K12 educators, is a place for teachers to compose and share learning materials, curriculuum, and resources for the classroom

Wikiversity, which hosts aides, content, and materials for college and university instructors, staff, and administrators

So a wiki is a web page, but its not only publicly visible, it also editable….

… first and foremost a wiki is a place to write. It’s not just a place for finished writing, its definitely a place for first drafts, second drafts, and so on.

One aspect of Web 2.0 services is what we call perpetual beta. This means that its never “finished”, and revisions are ongoing.

… this suggests one way in which users can collaborate… ok, maybe not like these guys…

… perhaps more like these guys, though contributors to a wiki may never actually meet or know each other.

You may use wikis in class for specific projects, either for the whole class or smal groups. Here’s one example of a middle-school student project that directed students to collabroatively research and write an article from scratch.

… usually by anyone, but some wikis require user authentication to edit… These people are editing synchronously, meaning at the same time.

A more famous example is UBC’s Murder Madness and Mayhem project. In 15 weeks the class authored or revised articles on unrepresented topics on Wikipedia and managed to get those articles featured and listed on the “good” list.

With a large community of contributors, ongoing Revisions happen all the time. The photos I’ve used show people working together simultaneously, but contributors do not have to edit synchronously. Everyone can make edits on their own time

Speaking of revising, if you author learning materials in a wiki, why not give students the assignment of revising. This could be a required class activity or even extra credit. That’s what the Romantic Audience project did.

One advantage to a wiki is because it’s authored and maintained by a collaborative community of contributors, wiki articles tend to have more currency. I’m not talking about money, I’m talking about how up-to-date, complete, and current the information is.

In my class I have information that changes every quarter. This page talks about current web browser usage. I use a wiki so that its easier to edit this sort of info on the fly, but also so my students can help me keep this up-to-date. This is the first example of a UVU WikiLearn article, so now would be a good time to show you where WikiLearn is and what specifically it’s use is.

One seemingly odd thing about wikis is how they develop. A wiki starts with a single page, like a seed. Other pages branch off of that page, which can branch off their own pages. Eventually pages tend to weave back in on themselves through hyperlinks and category references. The structure of a wiki is organic. They often are not excessively planned or arranged ahead of authoring. Indeed, organizing an informal, loosely knit community of world-wide collaborators to author along a single structure would be nigh impossible.

Wikipedia has proven itself immensely useful to the general public. Let’s look at why you might use wikis in education.

Colleagues – with a wiki you and your colleagues—both at UVU and around the world—can collaborate on authoring learning material and sharing curriculuum. This can save time and headaches as you share expertise. Currency. It’s hard to keep learning materials up to date. Using a wiki provides faculty or students the ability to help you keep info current. Reusability. If four faculty are teaching one course, it makes sense that they might share some learning materials. Hosted in a wiki, one article can be linked to by all faculty, even through their Blackboard Vista courses. And all edits and updates are immediate to all linked versions. Participation. Student participation can be a hard thing to motivate, but getting students involved in wiki editing can be engaging and educational. We’ll talk about applications in a moment. Practice. If you and your colleagues model good scholarship through wiki articles, students can practice those models as they edit and author their own articles.

url

Wikilearn is a publicly visible wiki…

For academic content authored by UVU faculty and students

Organized by academic department, program, or unit…

(You can see the URLs here)

… with editing limited to those with valid uvids—only current faculty, staff, and registered students can contribute…

, and those contributions can be tracked. Now the login system is tied to the UVLink banner system, so the UVIDs and passwords are the same.

Materials authed on the wiki are, by default, licensed as creative commons. Open licensing of wiki materials is important because (1) particular authorship is difficult to track and parse, and (2) the nature of the wiki is to openly collaborate and share for reuse and revision. The CC license we use as the default is CC By-NC

Those are the basics of the system. So how do you get started?

First check to see that there is nto already a wiki set up for your department. If there is, you are ready to start editing! If not…

… you can request a new wiki be set up for your dept. Remember, we do not set up wikis for individuals or courses, only for depts or programs.

Editing a wiki is easy a, like the name suggests, quick. There is some basic formatting markup to understand…

… but we provide a wikimarkup reference sheet to help you find your way!

The wikilern project is in a pilot testing phase, so there’s not a lot of use yet. If we have time lets look at two examples so far. Kirk Love – by course, course-specific Myself – by course, but mostly topic-specific

Learn to use it yourself. Plan projects that you and your colleagues, or you and your students will engage in. Know and describe how wiki participation will be scored. We have more info on the wikilearn main page to guide you. Once you’ve learned how to use wikimarkup, mentor your colleagues and students. Show them how to author, edit, revise, and hyperlink to pages and articles. Monitor wiki usage. Make sure no copyrighted or plagiarised materials are included. Model ethical scholarship with citations and references. Watch for bad revisions or acts of vandalism. Report vandalism to the system adminstrator. You can set up a “watchlist” on each wiki page you want to monitor. Reuse. Hyperlink to wiki articles in your LMS like Blackboard. Share links with colleagues. Encourage them to use articles, write their own, and share.

Colleagues – with a wiki you and your colleagues—both at UVU and around the world—can collaborate on authoring learning material and sharing curriculuum. This can save time and headaches as you share expertise. Currency. It’s hard to keep learning materials up to date. Using a wiki provides faculty or students the ability to help you keep info current. Reusability. If four faculty are teaching one course, it makes sense that they might share some learning materials. Hosted in a wiki, one article can be linked to by all faculty, even through their Blackboard Vista courses. And all edits and updates are immediate to all linked versions. Participation. Student participation can be a hard thing to motivate, but getting students involved in wiki editing can be engaging and educational. We’ll talk about applications in a moment. Practice. If you and y our colleagues model good scholarship through wiki articles, students can practice those models as they edit and author their own articles.

Favorites, Groups & Events

Wikis for Educators (And Educators for Wikis) (2008) - Presentation Transcript

Collaborate – Teach – Publish
Jared Stein – jstein@uvu.edu director of instructional design services Distance Education
what
why
where
how
what
“ quick”
wikipedia.org
wikipedia.org
wikibooks.org
wikieducator.org
wikiversity.org
write
collaborate
collaborate
authoring
anyone
contributing
ongoing a/synchronous
revising
currency
maintaining
organic
why
- Colleagues
- Currency
- Reusability
- Participation
- Practice
where
wikilearn.uvu.edu
public
academic
department
- wikilearn.uvu.edu/clss wikilearn.uvu.edu/cs wikilearn.uvu.edu/engl wikilearn.uvu.edu/ent wikilearn.uvu.edu/it wikilearn.uvu.edu/library
uvid
how
wikilearn.uvu.edu
editing
wikimarkup
- wikilearn.uvu.edu/cs
- wikilearn.uvu.edu/clss
Examples:
Getting Started
- Learn
- Plan
- Mentor
- Monitor
- Reuse
Jared Stein jstein@uvu.edu director of instructional design services Distance Education
Marc Hugentobler [email_address]
- wikipedia.org
- wikibooks.org
- wikieducator.org
- wikiversity.org
- wikilearn.uvu.edu