The Controversy about the use of Wiki's in Public High Schools
From LIS5313
Contents |
[edit] Introduction
This report describes what a "wiki" is, how it could be used in schools, and some reasons why it is not being used. I first realized there was a conflict with the use of wiki's when I tried to use one in my own classroom. Our school system, as well as many others, blocks all wiki's from being accessed on campus. I sought to learn why this is. In doing so I discovered several reasons but I also discovered some wonderful ways to negate the potential conflicts. This report will show how some teachers are using wiki's in the classroom and beyond.
[edit] What is a wiki?
A wiki is a website. What makes it exciting and controversial is that it can be edited using just a web browser. The real power of a wiki is that people in many locations can change the content of the site without talking or emailing one another. They don’t have to attach a word document to an email and send it around, hoping someone else isn’t changing it at the same time. With a wiki everyone can be looking at the same document even while it is being changed (Mader, 2006). When Ward Cunningham created the wiki idea, he was looking for a recognizable and yet unique name. He was traveling in Hawaii and noticed the name for the bus service between terminals at the airport was “wiki”- the Hawaiian word for quick. On March 25, 1995 he created the wikiwikiweb (Berners-Lee, 1999). There are some basic principles of a wiki: anyone can change anything, they are quick to use and they are easy to use. They are quick because the processes of reading and editing are combined. Wiki’s use simplified commands and new users don’t have to memorize lengthy code to use them. While most things that are written elsewhere gives credit to one person, wiki’s are ego-less. They are also never finished. They are not organized chronologically like a blog is but are usually organized by some kind of categories determined during the constant editing and authoring process. They are in a constant state of change (Lamb,2004).
"Wikis have become valuable tools for sharing best practices and discussing strategies for teaching science", says Michael Horton, a science coordinator for California's Riverside County Office of Education. Horton states that the technology of creating a wiki is very simple. “It’s about communicating with science teachers,” he says. “I was training some teachers talking about professional learning communities, and a person said, ‘I wish there was a blog where we could discuss that.’ Thirty seconds later, I had created a place on my wiki to do that.”
[edit] Why is there a controversy?
If you have ever taught high school, or raised a teenager, a statement above may have jumped out at you. Anybody can change anything…sounds far too dangerous to many school administrators. In every school there have been those who find a way to make their voices heard in a way that offends someone else. If this were to occur it could cause embarrassment for school administrators and staff.
When I first considered my topic for this report, the only controversy I was thinking about was the fear of wrongful editing. As I researched and read more on this topic though, I discovered other controversies. The two that stand out are potential cost and a fear of having to learn more technology.
For some reason many articles discussed the fear that allowing wikis in schools would cost districts money which of course they don't have. I assume many administrators fear that any new technology must by its nature be expensive.
Technology surrounds us and is changing constantly. So it is no wonder that everyone fears they just can't keep up with all the new technology. Teachers complain that they just don't have the time to learn one more new thing. This sounds difficult, after all it is a web page. Every high school student can whip one up in no time but not all teachers. The idea of having to learn all the code and language of sending a page to a server - well it just sounds hard. But as I found out it is not hard at all.
[edit] Why does this matter?
Wikis are very useful in the educational setting. As Stewart Mader states, “Teachers can take advantage of the tools and language students are already using to build a better, more productive relationship their students.” If teachers are allowed to use wikis for the courses they teach, students can learn to work collaboratively on projects both in and out of the classroom. Again Mader states “Like the bus service at the airport, people can easily come and go. The wiki like the bus lets people all view at the same time.” The wiki can also keep track of changes that are made so people can go back and look at previous versions and know who made certain changes (Mader, 2006).
The wiki is also a useful tool to administrators. As stated in School Administrator, "technology's power is no longer just in making information available. Rather the power to write ideas, share information and allow reflections to be published at will makes the difference" (Guhlin, Miguel,2008). A school can become an "organic team" when all the participants can be a part of the planning and can collaborate on solutions to common problems. There can be security measures built in so it is only viewed by faculty or staff. For instance, a faculty meeting agenda could be put on a wiki a week before the meeting. Teachers and administrators could access this via the web, login to change something, add an item to an agenda and then exit. They may make a subheading under a previous entry. The top down management style can transform into a true team effort (Lamb, 2004).
- Create simple websites
- Project development
- Group Authoring
- Track a group project
- Data Collection
- Review Classes and Teachers (Mader, 2006)
[edit] How can the controversy be resolved?
I interviewed three people who are the head of technology services for county school systems in the Atlanta area. Mr. Steve Thompson is in charge of this decision in Henry County, south of Atlanta. Mr. Thompson said the decision to block all wikis, including wikipedia, was made several years ago. Students could defame school sites and embarrass school administrators and teachers. Mr. Thompson also told me that the technology services staff had realized this was limiting some teachers who felt that using a wiki for instruction would be beneficial. Mr. Thompson also supervises the online learning courses offered to Henry County students. These courses are sometimes taught through Henry County online, local teachers, and sometimes through the Georgia Virtual School. Sometimes the Georgia Virtual School courses require students to use a wiki and when this happens the student must work from home. This is not possible for every student which causes a real problem.
Henry County is using Blackboard for the courses they teach online. Mr. Thompson told me about an add on feature to this version of Blackboard- the use of wikis and blogs. He directed me to one group of teachers who are piloting this. He felt this was a safer use of wikis because students must log in and then are identifiable. Hopefully this will be a warning that prohibited behavior is not tolerated. I contacted the people who are piloting this but they were not much help because they had only just finished a workshop to learn about it and hadn't implemented any of it yet.
I also emailed Ms. Jill Hobson in Forsyth County, north of Atlanta. With her acceptance I then sent her a short question list. This county prides itself on its applications of technology and boasts a smartboard in every classroom, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I anticipated a more progressive attitude to this part of web 2.0. I was disappointed to learn that they also block all wikis through their servers. She did not tell me about any way they were working on changing this nor did she make any excuses for it. She did tell me, although I had already discovered it, that the superintendent for Forsyth County Schools had a blog! I asked her how that was monitored and she told me that all submissions go through a clearing person before being published.
A response from Fulton County, a very large county in the center of Atlanta, was surprising. Mr. Daniel Gillette told me that they had several teachers who used wikis and blogs. He said they did not block them and had never really considered doing so. He made it sound like he didn't understand why they would.
Nobody that I talked to made any mention of the cost of allowing wikis or letting teachers create one through their courses. This did not seem to be any part of the decision to not allow them. Whether this is because they already had decided to not allow them or whether it was because they knew it could be done for no cost I could not tell. It is also possible that since the literature I found was a couple of years old, the free options may have become available after these articles.
One service, Wikispaces, launched a program just for teachers. This put free wikis into the hands of teachers across the nation. At the present time there are 18,000 free wikis being used by teachers. The service I am using for my Algebra II Honors class is pbwiki. A valuable feature of the wiki is that all entries or edits are trackable so teachers can assess which students are making contributions. This is also a deterant for students who are thinking of writing something inappropriate. There are many services that offer free wikis that are either web based or can be housed on a school system server.
Another controversy that has an easy resolution is the fear of learning a new technology. Adam Frey, a co-founder of wikispaces, states "look at the blackboard, which has been in the classroom since who knows when. A wiki is really a glorified whiteboard-- anyone can add to it, change it. This isn't something that teachers have to evolve to adopt; it's simply an extension of that technology" (Standen,2007). Mr. Thompson in Henry County felt that teachers were willing to take his workshop to learn how to operate Blackboard and I hope he is successful as this expands to other schools. In Forsyth County technology is such a big key concept that teachers know before they are hired that they are expected to be up on latest technology or take classes to learn.
The biggest concern then is the ability of anyone being able to edit and say anything. "Wikis work best when you trust your audience...Wiki's work best when everyone is allowed to contribute the way that's best for them, and the group moderates that information" says Frey of Wikispaces (Standen, 2007). The simplicity of working with a wiki makes it easy for people to participate. This participation helps users feel like they have a stake in the production and they take responsibility for its content. The more people use it the more they want to contribute and this contribution is vital to the growth of information and the community (Mader, 2006).
It is interesting that although wikis record editing changes and keep a history of who made the change, occasionally students have tried to work the system. Instead of making a valuable contribution to the project, they will just add a few words or punctuation and assume their instructor will see they logged on. Teachers have the ability to see the quality of what each students contributes though, Frey states (Standen, 2007).
So therefore a wiki for the classroom or for administrators is easy to use, free, and safe to use. It can be password protected, or each edit can be tracked to a specific user. Wiki's also have very valuable educational value as well.
This quote is on the wiki of Estancia high school in California but it seemed appropriate for this discussion. "As the great philosopher Aristotle suggested, a golden mean or middle ground is often where the answer lies, but where by necessity serious tension (pulled from both sides) occurs. Moreover, as Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, once said, "Let truth contend in the marketplace of ideas." Carlyle was confident that truth should be given freedom and space to be discussed, and in his Enlightenment age, he believed rational minds and reason would prevail." -Ravi Zacharia
[edit] A short video- - Why use a Wiki in your classroom?
Learn how you can use a wiki to help your students.
[edit] Examples of Schools using Wikis
"What our schools teach our students is good, but we need to change the context in which they learn, provide our students with opportunities to interact with the "real world" in real ways. The future of education is interactive, because that's what the jobs are in the "infoconomy". The future of education is communal, because the internet is communication. And this is what our students want! To be active. To be real. To have purpose. To interact. To have FUN! Well, as much as you can while doing homework." David James Conlay
This quote is on the wiki of an English teacher at Estancia High School in California. His wiki opens with some information about the school, population 1300 etc., and a short video of some students doing some kind of silly dance. There are lots of giggles but I assume they are learning something while demonstrating this dance. At the present time each class has a link and this goes to a calendar of project deadlines, tests etc. Previously it held a lot of information about certain projects that must be already turned in at this time. It did not appear to be a very interactive wiki. It could have easily been just a website when I saw it. He is using wikispaces which requires that people register and use a login and password to edit.
At Haleyville High School in Alabama students of Spanish teacher William Bishop use wikis to create and edit reports on Dia De Los Muertos, the Mexican holiday translated as the Day of the Dead, and the Galapagos Islands, as well as profiles of 21 Spanish-speaking countries. “The main thing is to have a strong acceptable-use policy,” Bishop says. “Make sure that’s in effect and you talk to students about it.”
Wikis … allow you to get 100 percent participation,” says Vicki Davis, a computer sciences teacher and information-technology director at Westwood Schools, a private school in Camilla, Ga. “Your team may have created the greatest wiki in the world, but if your user ID hasn’t contributed, then you get a zero. It eliminates the bottom-feeders of projects—the student who kicks back and lets all the other kids do the work.”
Davis has won awards for her wikis, including “The Flat Classroom Project,” which began when her class was studying Thomas L. Friedman’s best-seller The World Is Flat, which addresses the impact of globalization. That wiki linked Davis’ Georgia students with students in Bangladesh to collect and present information on globalization and outsourcing, virtual communication, and how the Internet has changed the world.
[edit] My own class wiki!
As an experiment for this project I created a wiki using pbwiki.com. My Algebra II Honors class was given a half sheet of paper describing the wiki and how to access it. I wasn't sure they would take the time to create their own log in and I have two very small classes so I gave them my login and password. I offered them ten extra credit points on their last test if they added five words to the vocabulary list. My students are not allowed to access this at school. Many of them could find a way though I'm sure. I do have two students who do not have internet access at home. For them I told them to write out five words and definitions and I'd input them.
The results so far have been pretty good. About half the students had accessed it the first night. One of them even put in pictures. I added some directions to the page to have them put their definitions in alphabetical order. I also allowed them to use different colors and fonts to keep it fun. I think this is a good way to review some vocabulary before the final exam.
[edit] References
- Mader, Stuart - "Four letter words" Using Wiki in Education
- Lamb, Brian, "The Way It Was Meant To Be", Educause review 9/10 2004
- Tim Berners-Lee, talk at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) 35th anniversary ceebrations, Cambridge, Mass., :April 14, 1999. http://www.w3.org/1999/04/13-tbl.html.
- Standen, Amy, "A Glorified Whiteboard", Edutopia Feb 2007 http://www.edutopia.org/glorified-whiteboard
- Library 2.0 and Beyond, Courtney edited, Libraries Unlimited, Westport, Connecticut 2007
- Guhlin, Miguel. "Wiki while you work.(TECH LEADERSHIP)." School Administrator 65.3 (March 2008): 8(1). General OneFile. :Gale. Florida State University. 20 Apr. 2008
- Davis, Michelle,"Wiki Wisdom: Lessons for Educators", EdWeek Sept 2007,http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2007/09/12/02wiki.h01.html
[edit] Resources
Photo of students by Extra Ketchup on Flickr by Creative Commons License
Photo of computer monitor by This Year's love on Flickr. Edited (words added) by Barbara Watson
Photo of computer monitor showing no access and my wiki taken by me- Barbara Watson