The last module asks us to investigate the educational use of wikis and nings. First of all I have to admit that I did not really know what a wiki was. I have of course been on wikipedia numerous times. I have noticed that students also often go on wikipedia as a first port of call when they are asked a question...a bit like we would go to the Encyclopedia Britannica when I was at school.
I went on wikipedia to read about wikis :-) and found out that a wiki is a "website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language". I also discovered that Wikispaces is a hosting service launched in 2005. I also read that since 2010 Wikispaces have cooperated with web 2.0 education platform Glogster EDU and that Glogster EDU now embeds Glogs into Wikispaces services.
I am interested in the use of wikis especially after reading the information on Wikis in the classroom and also the Wikis in the classroom presentation.
I like that it is easy for visitors to easily add, remove and otherwise edit and change some available content which makes it really interactive.
I had heard the word ning but had no idea what it meant. I found out that ning competes with social sites like Facebook by allowing people to create their own social networks around specific interests with their own visual design, choice of features and member data.
I think that wikis, nings and other web 2.0 tools can make teaching more engaging and interactive and will definitely appeal to learners. I think that some teachers including myself find the web 2.0 tools daunting for several reasons:
- you need a fair amount of time to learn about all the new tools and find ways to include them in your lessons.
- you need to "let go" of some of the control and trust that your students will learn without you being necessarily in charge 100% of the time.
- you need to still police the use of these new technologies to make sure they are not used inappropriately.
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