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Block 2: Activity Task 2

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Edited by Elena Kondyli, Saturday, 10 Apr 2010, 22:45

What is a wiki?

Wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor (Wikipedia, 2010a).

  1. An analysis of the social values wiki users adopt

Wiki users adopt the constructivist learning which is learning through activity, creation of knowledge and sharing of knowledge.  Additionally, the openess of wikis, leads the users to trust what peers are saying and obviously through sharing of their knowledge they have a trend to correct peer's mistakes.  The users are now working in an online community in a sense of a group and participate in online discussions in order to improve the existing entries or add new ones. All the users are working together with a strong sense of common purpose in student learning (Ferris and Wilder, 2006).

Furthermore, users collaborate with each other in order to edit, write and then save a story etc, insert links and finally issues of ownership and authorship can be raised.  There is also the need for the users to ask themselves how the information is organised and think about all the progressive changes of new technologies (Ferris and Wilder, 2006).  The Educause Learning Initiative-advancing learning through IT innovation (2005) suggests that users are using wikis in a democratic way and also wikis promote pride of authorship and ownership in a group activity.  There is a real-time interactivity and this helps users to collaborate at the same time, on the same moment to fix the postings, editings, writings and finally decide on the most appropriate content to be published. As users are socialising through wikis as they are sharing ideas, then the innovation capacity increases from wiki infrastructure (Gordon, 2006).

 

  1. A discussion regarding the relationship between these social values and the features of the wiki technology itself

As wikis are collaborative Web-based sites with "open editing", the users are able to read, edit or change the text by simply having a Web-browser in order to re-write, re-construct, re-organise not only the structure, but also the content of the site.  The technology of the wikis is completely associated with the social values and both are effectively interrelated (Ferris and Wilder, 2006).  As Weller (2006) suggests in his article, technology limits the effectiveness of the social values of users who in return have to be willing to engage not only with the content but with the technology too.  Someone might say that people are feeling insecure and scared to use the technology and publish different postings in public manner in the Web.  However, I do not agree with these opinions as users already know how to use the technology and wiki technology is an easy one with easy functions and anyone can use it.  They do not need tremendous training or something but just a Web browser in order to be able as I have mentioned above to read, edit/add text and then save it and it would be a web page at the end.  The technology of the wikis is simple and user-friendly that is why users sometimes do not trust the resources or they do not feel that for example Wikipedia as a reliable resource for students to use.  Additionally, as wiki is an open source, then it is easier for anyone to publish inaccurate or unfaithful information and this leads to misleading information.  But, users have to have the ability to distinguish between the correct information and the misleading one as they are making their own judgements regarding the accuracy of the information (Ferris and Wilder, 2006).  Moreover, the Educause Learning Initiative-advancing learning through IT innovation (2005) comments that there is the fear for inappropriate content and language, spam and these are some features that in order to be monitored have to have time and personnel intensive.  By representing the collective prospective of the group that uses the wiki then the wiki has a collaborative bias.

In conclusion, wikis are an excellent starting place from which to create social networks and seeding future opportunities for learning and growth (Gordon, 2006).             .

(684 words)

References:

Ferris, S. P. and Wilder, H. (2006) Uses and Potentials of Wikis in the Classroom [online], http://www.innovateonline.info/pdf/vol2_issue5/Uses_and_Potentials_of_Wikis_in_the_Classroom.pdf(accessed 09 April 2010).

Gordon, C. (2006) Wikis-a disruptive innovation [online],http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=15802 (accessed 09 April 2010).

The Educause Learning Initiative-advancing learning through IT innovation (2005) 7 things you should know about...wikis [online], http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7004.pdf (accessed 09 April 2010).

Weller, M. (2006) 'The distance from isolation: why communities are the logical conclusion in e-learning' (accessed 09 April 2010).

Wikipedia (2010a) Wikipedia definition for Wiki [online], http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki#cite_note-3 (accessed 09 April 2010).

 

 

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