WK 2: Wiki Reflection

This activity incorporated the pedagogical principles identified in this week’s course materials:

1. Embedded questions facilitating deep knowledge through higher order thinking.
2. Facilitates collaborative learning with an onus on conversations / group contributions.
3. This reflective task supports students to recognise how they learn best.
4. This activity was problem-based, with a focus on real life contexts (use of mobile phone technologies in the classroom).
5. The concept was relevant to each of us and allowed each contributor to draw upon their background knowledge
6. The Wiki context was owned, controlled and managed by the contributors.
7. By establishing ‘netiquette’ within the GDLT, this course structure is socially supportive, engaging, and values cultural knowledges.
8. The legal, safety and ethical information helped develop literacies for active citizenship, and strong group identity.

Using DeBono’s six hats to take multiple points of view enabled contributors to demonstrate thinking within each of Bloom’s six cognitive categories. I personally found it difficult to stick to a limit of 40 words for each hat when applying the processes of analysis, synthesis and evaluation in this activity.

An evaluation of the DeBono’s Hats Wiki could arguably be informed by each of the four main theoretical perspectives reviewed in the course readings.

• Using DeBono’s hats as a context for the collaborative discussion allowed each user to construct their arguments with their own understandings and experiences; it is interesting to apply a behavioural analysis to each contribution and consider that each contributor’s opinion would have been influenced by their own experiences with technology in the classroom.
• Having these ideas and arguments reviewed and evaluated within a socially-constructive group forum allowed for unique contributions. Although all the Wiki’s may contain similar ideas, no argument is the same. I do feel there is an argument to be had as to how effective this forum was in engendering social interactions and collegiate engagement; however, I do consider that this was a first ‘Wiki’ exposure for many of us, and am confident that these socially-constructive interactions will become more frequent as our experience with Wikis grows.
• Having been blissfully unacquainted with Wiki’s prior to these activities, I am struck by how easy it was to participate by applying Siemen’s connectivist approach to the practicality of participating in a Wiki. Before I could undertake the activity I first had to focus on learning how to access and contribute to a Wiki; a combination of trial and error, Google and YouTube saw a successful contribution. This was made easier by ‘understanding the pipeline and its connections’ as my introduction to a Wiki had been scaffolded in the Res School’s activities.
• Having explored the world of the Wiki, a cognitivist approach tells us that the key now is to continue to practice these new skills with a focus on ‘use it’ so as to not  ‘lose it’.

This exercise was not without issue, as I was lucky enough to experience the small hiccup identified by Wendy when hitting save within a few seconds of another contributor. I am glad I had viewed the initial video and followed the instruction to save my contributions another location (in this instance MSWord). In retrospect, for future classroom implementation I would perhaps scaffold a Wiki exercise with a connectivist learning approach focused on identifying the how and where of the world of Wiki information.

References

DeBono Thinking Systems (R). (2013) Six Thinking Hats 2013. Retrieved from:http://www.debonothinkingsystems.com/tools/6hats.htm

What is Pedagogy. (2013). Retrieved from: http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/page/view.php?id=206471

Rob Priddey. (2012). Cybersafety and reputation management: Managing inappropriate online behaviours. 

Retrieved from: http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/page/view.php?id=206473

Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Domains. (2013). Retrieved from: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html#cognitive

A Brief Overview of Learning Theory. (2013). Retrieved from: http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/page/view.php?id=206461