work with your peers to create a collaborative writing wiki. Wikis are editable Web sites and, like blogs, they require little technical skill to master
that wikis are designed for collaboration among groups of users
it presents what the "crowd" thinks is the truth, using a different epistemological set of standards including three policy thresholds for inclusion into its wiki
it presents what the "crowd" thinks is the truth, using a different epistemological set of standards including three policy thresholds for inclusion into its wiki
it presents what the "crowd" thinks is the truth, using a different epistemological set of standards including three policy thresholds for inclusion into its wiki
"verifiability policy," where justification that the information is published is the criteria for acceptance, not experts' evidence; (b) "no original research policy," where no original thought is accepted; and (c) "neutral point of view policy," where all points of view are presented regardless of validity. These epistemological standards are counter to expectations of a postsecondary education.
explain five types of wikis with applications to developmental education (DE).
a variety of dynamic Web pages that can be edited using Web browsers
Wikis allow a group to collaboratively construct a document online by subscribing and then editing multimedia using simple text editors
examples are generally accessible after joining a wiki site
Newer research is suggesting writing using Web 2.0 technology changes how students construct meaning (Writing in Digital Environments [WIDE] Research Center, 2008).
A wiki blurs the line between the reader and the writer
Through the "wisdom of the crowd" (Liotta, 2008) and students discussing, writing, and sharing combined knowledge and perceptions of reality, an understanding (i.e., truth) is determined
Wikipedia does not purport to present the "truth" about what is known about a given topic as documented by experts
DE students need to recognize that Wikipedia is no more than an encyclopedia, which is not adequate for college-level work
Phillipson (2008) placed wikis into five "stages of inquiry." A resource wiki is a knowledge form (like Wikipedia
Presentation wikis are a communication form for drafts of documents to share with a group in order to improve an individual's project and one's ability to communicate that work.
Gateway wikis are data sharing forms to engender a communal discussion of different ways to make meaning from a set of data
Simulation wikis are an exploration venue where a simulated environment is provided
Illuminated wikis are an explication of a text form: A text is divided and each person in a group documents with coconstructed steps how to understand and convert to knowledge their individual part.
What makes a wiki unique is that it runs software that permits visitors to add new information and, more important, edit previous authors' submissions
two major types of wikis
classroom-based wikis
public wikis
there is growing diversity in the types and formats of online public wikis (Richardson, 2006), the most popular wikis with teachers and teacher-librarians seem to be those that resemble online encyclopedias.
the wiki's readability, the school's accessibility to the Internet, the objectives of the teacher-librarian and classroom teacher, and the students' ability to evaluate the authenticity and credibility of wiki information.
Wikijunior posted an average readability of grade 8
Even wikis created for elementary children scored high readabilities
checking the site's readability beforehand.
estimate of a public wiki's readability
a wiki's use of multimedia may provide students with many multimodal (e.g., audio, visual) contextual clues with which to comprehend the text (Jewitt, 2005).
comprehension of the wiki's content is significantly compromised when students are faced with print ranked two or more grade levels above their own.
Schools with a limited number of Internet-capable computers and schools with limited Internet bandwidth find accessing wiki information a slow endeavor indeed-especially if one wants to have the whole class visit a wiki together
developing wiki-based literacy learning objectives, effective teacher-librarians ask themselves questions such as "What information literacy skills are unique to this format?" "Can this literacy be learned faster or more clearly with another technology?" and "Is this a good use of my precious time on these computers?"
determining the credibility and authenticity of the informa
students must be taught information literacy skills aimed at evaluating the credibility and authenticy of a wiki's information. Examples of library-based activities aimed at helping students determine the credibility and authenticity of web pages and wikis are located at www.stenhouse.com/pdfs/8196ch09.pdf.