Education.au Seminars

With my focus being on promoting the first education.au seminar for 2007, which Jimmy Wales (the founder of Wikipedia) is the keynote speaker at, I’ve been watching and listening keenly to the discussions around Wikipedia.
While some educational institutions have banned the use of Wikipedia there are many practitioners out there who are unlocking the potential Web 2.0 technologies like Wikipedia have to offer.

Dr Nicola Pratt, a lecturer in comparative politics and international relations at the University of East Anglia in the UK is using Wikipedia to develop student’s critical thinking, research and writing skills. Articles at BBC News, profy.com and  the Education Guardian UK provides details about how Dr Pratt requires students to assess content, determine bias, interact with others in the same field, and ultimately draw their own conclusions. As students edit and write articles on Middle Eastern politics they are evaluating articles for bias by looking at:

• Did someone have an agenda when they were writing the article?
• How well did the original author(s) evaluate their sources?
• What other information should have been included, or should be removed?

The project ends in June and findings will then be presented. In the long term Dr Pratt intends to adapt the method to undergraduate teaching as well.

Another interesting read is a case study presented by futurelab UK, May 2006 - Using Wikis in Schools. The case study begins by acknowledging the demands of the knowledge economy and the need for students to know how to learn and participate in creating new knowledge if they are going to acquire essential life skills.

The project was short term and small scale and as such, ‘….generalisable conclusions should not be drawn’ and as the author of this report also states:

….this was the first time this school had used wikis, and was intended as an initial pilot study to explore the use of wikis rather than a defined programmed of use. Practices may change over time as students and teachers become more familiar with the affordances of the wiki as a collaborative research and writing tool.

What the project highlights for me is the difficulty students had shifting from the practices of individualised classroom writing tasks to the social and cultural practices of working collaboratively to develop ideas. To assist students and teachers to make this shift it is suggested that:

• students are introduced to existing wiki communities to learn from the practices of the community
• students research wikis as a model of practice
• teachers model the collaborative process by participating with students in the construction of wikis.

A discussion for potential uses of social software in learning can be found in Futurelab’s report Opening Education: Social Software and Learning.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to discuss and debate issues with Jimmy Wales: Adelaide 23 April, Perth 24 April, Sydney  26 April or Melbourne 27 April.
To register for one of the four locations for education.au’s Seminar 1 - Challenging How Knowledge is Created go to:

https://secure.educationau.edu.au

deebo-Deanne Bullen- education.au