Reflection 2 Wk 3 Wikis

I have chosen to reflect on wikis as an ICT tool. They have such a rich functionality as a learning tool. Wikis enable and encourage social interaction, collaboration and communication. Teachers can adopt a true constructivist approach with children learning from experience and social interaction (http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/page/view.php?id=146071). Among its functions are :

• ability to track user history (encourage participation due to visibility of such)
• ability to track changes (control appropriate usage, edit when required)
• ability to track individual vs. group contributions (see any learning deficits)
• widgets to embed anything useful (encourage students' own resourcefulness and creativity)
• a comments facility (social interaction, collaboration)
• multiple user functionality (social interaction and collaboration)

One drawback with wikis is that they don't allow for concurrent authoring. Writers can inadvertently type over or wipe another's work. This can be tracked and corrected however with the history tracking function.

In an early primary classroom (grades 1-3) wikis could be used for any type of class project. Younger children could perhaps contribute to a class wiki through comments about individual artworks uploaded to tell the story behind it. This is a valuable literacy exercise as well as fostering ICT familiarity and socially interactive learning.
Grade 3 children could participate in wiki activities like tabulating experiment results, uploading photos and research. Small group wiki assignments enable equal contributions from participants at home as well as school and a tool to measure such contributions.

I have created a simple wiki on wikispaces. https://alliselearningwiki.wikispaces.com/ In the wiki I have created pages as I explored different functions. The last page created, "spinach growing experiment" is an example of an experiment a grade 3 class could experience. Children could be paired or grouped and a page created for each group to record their data. Children and teachers could comment on each others' pages to collaborate information and conclusions. Children may use the internet to research possible explanations for results and post links to such and photographs of their plants. They may even embed links to websites such as CSIRO and invite relevant researchers to their wiki.