Wikis and Teachers

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Teachers perspectives in 2009

Interview with Graham Wegner, co-creator of classroom wiki Spin the Globe

1. Why did you choose Wikispaces over another provider?
Wikispaces were the only provider at the time that were offering ad-free accounts for educators (PBWorks do the same now) and I was already familiar with the format so I felt confident in teaching my students in how to use it.

2. As teachers what features would we want the wiki we are using to have? Which were important to you?
You need the wiki to be easy to set up, easy to fix changes via the history tab, and easy to embed different forms of multimedia as wikis can be about much more than just text. An RSS feed feature will mean that you can subscribe to changes via Google Reader or email and keep track of when the students are making their changes.

3.What privacy/security settings and precautions did you take? Did you get permission from parents?
Yes, I obtained permission from parents but the students were very anonymous - they used avatars and online nicknames to post anything on the wiki. The wiki was open to the WWW for viewing but only invited participants (the students from both classes) could make changes.

4. Did your school employ filtering that blocked access to wikis? If so how did you overcome this?
At the time, the standard DECS filter blocked wikispaces but as administrator of our Educonnect account, I unblocked the wikispaces site by adding it to our whitelist.

5. How useful did the students find it? What were their perspectives/evaluations?
The students enjoyed the project, using the wiki was relatively easy but they were frustrated at their perceived lack of effort from their Alaskan counterparts. I knew of some of the difficulties from that end but couldn't necessarily share that with my students. Some kids also thought that the more edits they made, the more productive they would be seen to be. One student would log in, add a comma, log out then log back in and add the comma back in and so on, creating a long list of changes in the history - thinking he would look like a major contributor.

6. If you did it all over again what would you do differently?
I think if you read my blog posts, I explain that pretty well.

7. How do you think it improved the students learning and understanding?
Again, refer to the blog posts.

8. As a teacher what were the greatest challenges/hurdles using a wiki in the classroom?
Access to computers is always an issue and the fact that only one person can edit a particular page at one time. Two kids editing the same page means that one version will save over the other.

9. How would you see the best use of the wiki for student learning?
Not sure - that depends on the learning goals. I like to think that it would be the ideal place to collaborate with another classroom from another place but that depends on a lot of pre-planning and investment on the teachers' part.

A survey was completed in a South Australian southern school in 2009, where teachers were asked about their knowledge and use of wikis and web 2.0 tools.The teachers range from R - 13 and includes specialist teachers.

Of the teachers questioned we found that not many knew about wikis and that hardly any of them have used a wiki in their own classroom.

From that same survey we were also able to find out the teachers thoughts and views about wikis and web 2.0 tools.

Most teachers think wikis and web 2.0 tools are beneficial to students learning for these reasons:

• 'increased student engagement'
• 'motivating as students today are screen orientated'
• 'enhancing the sharing of knowledge'
• 'It provides opportunities to teach young people about responsible use of the Internet and tools available.'

Teachers believe that it is important to embrace new technologies in the classroom for the following reasons:

• 'Technology is becoming and has become an important part of day to day life.'
• 'Our students are already using these tools and their use is the way of the future.'
• 'Its great that parents can look at students projects on line and give feedback.'

From the survey we were also able to establish some of the concerns that teachers have about using wikis and web 2.0 tools in the classroom and these have been addressed here.

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Teachers Perspectives in 2010

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