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7 things you didn’t know about Wikipedia (2 of 7) – It is pretty up to date [@wikimediauk @Wikimedia @Wikipedia]⤴
from Ollie Bray
Love it or hate it Wikipedia is a big part of our lives and its certainly a big part of our online browsing experience. Whether we admit to it or not many people consult Wikipedia on a regular basis to answer their questions. A large part of this is due to the fact that Google loves Wikipedia more than any other site on the Internet. In fact it gets presented as the top search result to more search queries than anything else, even Google itself.
Anyway, one of the challenges for educators using Wikipedia is trying to get students to use it appropriately and really to understand what it is and what it can do.
This series of posts should give you a few ideas.
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7 things you didn’t know about Wikipedia (2 of 7) – It is pretty up to date
If you went to your school library and looked at the date your last set of encyclopedias were purchased – would they be in the last decade? What about the last five years? One year? Yesterday?
Across the world investment in books in libraries is on the decrease. Although this might be wrong, it is an unfortunate reality. When I taught at Musselburgh Grammar School I once challenged students to find the out-of-date articles in traditional print encyclopedias.
Moving on, there is no doubt about it that Wikipedia is more up to date in terms of real time events than traditional encyclopedias. One of my favorite days ever in the classroom was back in 2005 when when Pluto was declassified as a planet (I can’t quite believe that was almost ten years ago). Wikipedia was (and always has been) up-dated almost straight away.
Obviously, this is an example that sticks with me. But, when you think about other global events in recent times such as Ebola, The October 2014 crash of Virgin Atlantic or Tim Cook (from Apple) becoming the first openly gay CEO on the Fortune 500 list.
While traditional encyclopedias and sources have to wait for a re-print (or a re-purchase) Wikipedia relies on the power of the crowd to keep it as accurate and as natural as possible. There is of course difference between up-to-date and accuracy.
So, are your paper based Encyclopedias really as up to date and accurate as Wikipedia? What about the accuracy of your staff, support staff and parent knowledge?
Food-for-thought?
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Key Message: Educators should encourage students to look at when Wikipedia articles were last up-dated. You can see this by clicking on the ‘view history’ tab in the top right hand corner of each Wikipedia Page.
7 things you didn’t know about Wikipedia – Introduction [@wikimediauk @Wikimedia @Wikipedia]⤴
from Ollie Bray
Ian Stuarts Tweet asking “Scottish Teachers – Who is up for developing the use of wikipedia and other wikimedia products in schools? #eduwiki” reminded me that I really must get round to writing up my “7 things you didn’t know about Wikipedia Talk”. It also reminded me I must start to get out and about to conferences and education events a little more often – I’ve become increasing conscious that I’ve been ‘off the grid’ in the last 12 months.
I’ve been a Wikipedia fan since the start and also a fan of the wider Wikimedia family. I even delivered the keynote at the Wikimedia UK Annual Conference in Bristol back in 2011. The keynote resulted from a couple of digital scrapes in cyberspace / the blogosphere where I was trying to defend Wikipedia as a valuable source much to the anger (but ultimately confusion – due to a lack of understanding) of a few traditionalists (mainly journalists!). Who, quite frankly couldn’t see the woods from the trees.
Anyway, the recent #eduwiki conference in Edinburgh seems to have built a bit of momentum again for the real value of Wikimedia (including Wikipedia) in Scottish Schools. So, I’ll send the next week posting a few ideas and tips to help teachers become more familiar with Wikipedia. There really is nothing new here – but perhaps the time is right to re-visit the agenda?
At the end of the series I’ll also post a few recommendations for Scottish Education.
7 things you didn’t know about Wikipedia – Introduction [@wikimediauk @Wikimedia @Wikipedia]⤴
from Ollie Bray
Ian Stuarts Tweet asking “Scottish Teachers – Who is up for developing the use of wikipedia and other wikimedia products in schools? #eduwiki” reminded me that I really must get round to writing up my “7 things you didn’t know about Wikipedia Talk”. It also reminded me I must start to get out and about to conferences and education events a little more often – I’ve become increasing conscious that I’ve been ‘off the grid’ in the last 12 months.
I’ve been a Wikipedia fan since the start and also a fan of the wider Wikimedia family. I even delivered the keynote at the Wikimedia UK Annual Conference in Bristol back in 2011. The keynote resulted from a couple of digital scrapes in cyberspace / the blogosphere where I was trying to defend Wikipedia as a valuable source much to the anger (but ultimately confusion – due to a lack of understanding) of a few traditionalists (mainly journalists!). Who, quite frankly couldn’t see the woods from the trees.
Anyway, the recent #eduwiki conference in Edinburgh seems to have built a bit of momentum again for the real value of Wikimedia (including Wikipedia) in Scottish Schools. So, I’ll send the next week posting a few ideas and tips to help teachers become more familiar with Wikipedia. There really is nothing new here – but perhaps the time is right to re-visit the agenda?
At the end of the series I’ll also post a few recommendations for Scottish Education.
A Wiki, A Blog or A Forum?⤴
from Unknown @ TecnoTeach
Making a decision regarding a tool to use is the easiest part, however, sometimes the decision is not the best one. Let's take three Web tools that can be found in many learning platforms of used as separate entities from the web: Blogs, Wikis and Forums.
Why do we use these? How do we use these? Is this the best tool for the job? Could we do the task more effectively using another medium?
According to Warlick (2005), each of these tools have specific purposes:
Blog - used to communicate or deliver a message to a specific audience.
Wiki - content management system used to construct a collaborative document.
Forum - a conversation that builds on ideas through constructing new knowledge by reflecting and reacting.
Many educators use blogs personally or with children to communicate to a wider audience information. It is used as a way of sharing information. A bit like a news board but reaching a wider audience and with a facility to retrieve old posts through effective tagging. I used this style of blogging when a primary teacher at High School of Dundee to share our learning with the wider community or to publish our fortnightly radio shows. I did not, however, use the blog in isolation due to the moveable nature of the blog posts where items can be lost in archives, wikispaces were also used to have a permanent quick visual record of what we had created similar to a website.
Using wikis as a means to store and share information is the prime method of implementation in education rather than the collaborative document creation that they were designed for. The reason being is that wikis are only collaborative asynchronously meaning that children can not collaborate real time.
The last tool, Forums, which are in many virtual learning environments, are used in many educational settings from schools to further education. In Scotland's National Education Network GLOW, many schools are implementing the use of Forums to connect, share and collaborate with children inside and outside school. Many are using the tool effectively to deepen and extend knowledge through the discussion aspect and many are using ineffectively through posting content to these areas without the collaborative conversation taking place. Should another tool be used instead to publish if no communication is initiated?
Out of the three tools, Forums appear to be the least effective tool due to three aspects: non-instant chat, no facilitation or goal and no RSS feeds on some. Today's technology enables instant communication and collaboration with others that Forums can sometimes not provide. The delay in response can be frustrating that a different method of communication is chosen. There is, however, a positive side to this delay, it provides thinking time and does not pressurise the reader to respond. The other aspect, facilitation, is what can keep a forum alive. To create a question on a forum and never return to engage with others provides a simple statement rather than a conversation. Facilitation can be through only opening a Forum at a specific time where the users know there will be someone there to read and respond to their posts. An open forum, where facilitation is as and when needed will only work effectively if there is an RSS feed attached to the forum discussion. The forums in Ning use RSS effectively by notify the members when a new post has arrived. Members can respond freely, however, what keeps these forums alive are the key players who create a forum question returning and interacting with their members where a conversation is developed.
Do you use blogs, wikis or forums in your educational setting and are you using the correct tool for the job?
Do We Still Need Editors?⤴
from Unknown @ TecnoTeach
Although written in 2005 this book is now slightly outdated as I review five years on. Blogging was just taking off for many at this period but technology has moved on where there is more instant communication and collaboration occurring.
There are, however, small pockets of information that can be taken from the book with the first being the publishing aspect. Prior to blogging, journalists were the publishers and they had to persuade their editor to publish their stories. This was not a free voice process with the editors editing the stories as they pleased prior to publication. Blogging, changed the wheel where the journalists, alias the Web 2.0 bloggers, no longer have to go past the editor to publish but can freely put their stories on the internet for anyone to read. Freedom of speech...freedom of text... To an extent freedom to bypass people enables all to have a voice but for many this freedom can come at a cost. Apple employees are not allowed to blog and neither are many other employees as the company safeguards what is written about them or by their staff. In schools, who blog, this authoritarian line is taken by some, to an extent with others and completely ignored by a few. Why? This all depends on the systems that are in place. Some schools are not happy with children blogging freely and do not want children's work to be put in the eye of the public. An experience I had of this approach came from the school not wanting parents comparing children's work online where enough pressure was placed on the child to achieve without comparing daily against others. The middle ground, is where teachers allow children to blog but through a moderated environment where the teacher approves children's post prior to publish. The majority of post that evolve through this method are account of events or learning rather than reflections on personal learning. The final approach, a free voice for all, is very rare and I am not too sure why such freedom is granted since I have never gone down that route. Surely, anything that will go out the school building to the public eye should be moderated, like the editor of a newspaper. I therefore ask the question: should primary children be allowed the freedom to blog freely where their voice can be heard without submitting their voice to an editor first?
If you answer that we are giving children an authentic audience, to an extent this is correct, however, who reads their blogs daily? All public blogs can be read by anyone, however, Hewitt (2005) explain the notion of 'The Tail'. This reflects the 95 - 99% of blogs that do not get thousands of followers each day. They are the tail at the end of the graph that no one or just some follow. Our children are 'The Tail' and very few people will read their blogs. Very few people read mine as I am part of 'the tail' too, but, as I have said in previous posts, I do not blog for an audience I blog as a reflective tool where I can dip back and find reflections of readings or educational tools that I have encountered. Maybe the notion of 'giving all freedom to let their voices be heard to a global audience' is the wrong notion and blogging should be more about what will the benefit be to publishing one's reflections on an open space to recording in a private diary. Why do I not just use good old Word and type my reflections in there? Why do I not just buy a paper notebook and scribble my thoughts in there? The answer to all of these questions is that a blogging connects me with a small group of like-minded people in my 'tail'. We learn from one another. Children can learn from one another too rather than just publishing to Web 2.0.
This takes me back to my questions: 'Do we still need editors?' As an adult I would say no if I follow the rules of etiquette on the net. Student teachers - I would say no, however, with the way that many freely write in their social media pages, I would have to say that they still need to be taught net etiquette to ensure the balance between personal and professionalism are not weighed too heavily to one side. Lastly, as for children, I am still under the impression that moderation is required through an editor, their teacher, to ensure what is placed online represents a school rather than an unguided free voice. Schools are about providing the conditions that scaffold children's learning and this is no different with technology where it is imperative that children are taught net etiquette to safe guard their futures.
Warlick. D. F., (2005). Classroom Blogging: A Teacher’s Guide to the Blogosphere. North Carolina: The Landmark Project⤴
from Unknown @ TecnoTeach
Although this book is now outdated, it is still a starting point for those who have never blogged and wish to dip their toes in to find out what it is all about. This was my bible when I started blogging many years ago. What is a blog?
Warlick's initial conceptual understanding: 'a way for almost anyone, regardless of their technical expertise, to publish information for global audiences over the Internet.' (P9).
This understanding developed to: 'giving voice to people like you and me..a new society of citizen journalists' (P9). The latter is what I relate blogging to, where many can let their 'voices' be heard on the global web rather than those that have the skills and knowledge of HTML coding.
Warlick goes on to mention his attendance at a 'bloggercon' (a meeting or conference of bloggers) where he was originally disillusioned by the spontaneous discussions rather than the sage on the stage type with courteous discussions. However, on reflection he saw the ethics of this where 'all participants had equal voice, equal right, and equal opportunity to share their ideas' (P13).
Web 2.0 is now full of tools that replicate 'bloggercons'. Twitter, for example is a prime example of a mass of people letting their voices be heard. More like a conversation at a nightclub with people shouting out, however, in the midst of all these vocalisations there will be something that grabs someone's attention and is worth a read. A bit like car boot sales, what is trash to one's eye is a golden nugget to another. Through my RSS feeds there are a mass of post thrown to my iPhone each day which I duly skim through during those spare five minutes that occasionally occur during the day. The majority of these blog posts are discarded, however, one or two generally catch my eye and extent or deepen my knowledge to replicate my grandmother's philosophy that you learn something new everyday.
Mass conversations have their place in today's society, however, there is still a place for focused contributions to the global voice of the web and this is where blogging fits nicely into this category, especially in education by providing what Warlick categorised as 'authentic assignments of finding, reading, and evaluating blog-based information within the context of curriculum and then make them bloggers, communicators with a broadening audience, then we may do a more effective job of teaching literacy, both in the traditional sense, and within the context of an emerging new definition of literacy in a networked, digital information environment' (P16).
To an extent some schools have adopted this approach where children are the bloggers, however, many schools that have blogs revert to the teacher being the blogger and the children being the consumers. Yes, the children may have created work that is placed on the blog but it becomes a glorified website. Warlick stated that 'the blogosphere is a global conversation. using the web has traditionally been an act of passively consuming information. Because of blogs, more and more Internet users are becoming active participants in the digital information environment' (P22). He then goes on state that blogs are personal. To an extend this is true but in education the majority are not due to being a class blog rather than a personal blog. One of the reasons for teacher-led blogs is security and ensuring that children are not given free access to publish their voices incase they write inappropriate content. Although there are mechanisms in place for teachers to moderate posts prior to publishing, many teachers take the safe route where they are the publishers. I have to admit this is the route I took a few years ago when I was a class teacher as the school were not happy with children publishing straight into the eyes of the world. This also stemmed from working as a mediator for Superclubs Plus where even in a closed secure environment, I witness how children can use tools inappropriately when they think a teacher is not physically monitoring them.
Scotland's national intranet for education, GLOW, is currently a very teacher-led platform, however, this has been acknowledged and the plans to implement wikis and blogs into this environment should provide pupils with a place to let their voices be heard in a closed environment. This means that teachers will have the platform and the environment that enable children to let their voices be heard in a safe environment. Care, however, needs to be taken that the learning is not contrived but is meaningful otherwise the blog will just become an electronic replacement for a pen and paper and children will quickly see this link where technology is being used to replace a conventional method rather than create a new method of learning.