WHO DARES, WINS !!!

Isn’t it so true that one needs time to reflect, collaborate and even “play” with an idea? And after that doesn’t one have to recast and edit it? ...

This manipulation of an idea takes time and is always done in a very personal way. In this last week I guess we really did this personal development into the wiki-sphere. Thanks to the very useful suggestions that Daniel Schneider - the wiki administrator of Edutech - gave to us, we have understood how to respect, how to well collaborate and the sense and the importance of our contributions on Edutech connected to the world outside our Blogging English 1 course.

Following Schneider's advices if one wants to make effective wiki contributions he or she has always to keep in mind a couple of simple rules:

• quote the sources and cite them properly;
• match personal experiences and knowledge with researches on the matter;
• be clear and straightforward;
• make internal links to other pages in the wiki;
• use paragraph, divisions and bold to make readings desirable;
• create an exhaustive bibliography.
  

Wiki-ing gives us the chance to become responsible for the construction of our writing on the Web. Each webfolio is important for students who have collaborated to it because it can show their progresses but also because it can be evaluated by many other people.

Learning is interactive and that is what makes learning a personal experience. We must interact with information, manipulate it, play with it, mold it for us and for the others who may be interested in our same subjects.

Alice

Photo taken from: GoVisitCostaRica

WIKI-ING

Have you ever tried to contribute to a wiki? ...

My first experience with wiki-ing took place in these last days when I tried to give my contribution to a couple of articles among the huge range proposed by Edutech wiki.
At the beginning I was a little bit scared of all the subjects Edutech offers but then I bore up and started to read some of these pages. Having a look around I decided to contribute to a page where nobody else had already written something. I thought contributing to “e-tutoring” could be a good starting point: I made some searches on the web because I was sure that only my experience wouldn’t be enough. Thanks to the course Blogging English 1 I’ve been discovering what e-learning means but wiki-ing requires something more than personal impressions. Looking at what my tutor does and proposes I critically read the online pages on e-tutoring. I tried to focus my attention on the role both of tutors and learners on the context of e-instruction: it wasn’t that easy because of the wide range of material found but also because I couldn’t start to write something which everyone could read, judge and maybe refer to for his/her work. Every time I write a comment on my blog I know that anyone in the world can read it but I’m also sure that they can easily run up against my profile and in some way “justify” my mistakes. In wiki-ing is not so foregone.

Afterwards I decided to contribute to a page where I knew two of my peers were working at: I left just a couple of sentences on “podcasting” because they had already written most of the significant points we knew about it. Working in a team can be hard: you have to be ready to receive critics about your contribution and maybe to see your work deleted if the content appears to the other too trivial.

However both articles, this last one about podcasting and the other one regarding e-tutoring, are not complete yet. I’m really looking forward to see how they will develop and how I will go on contributing at them ;-)

Alice


Photo taken from: Flickr

GET THE BETTER OF… WIKI !

In my previous post I’ve already pointed out that wiki means above all collaborative writing made of peers. In spite of the general overview on the wikisphere what I’ve really missed talking about is its main purpose, its large audience, its kind of language and more in general its chief characteristics.

As regards the main purpose of wiki the first keyword which immediately comes to my mind is collaboration. People write articles and post them on the Web: users are free to comment on and change texts creating a sort of community of readers who shares the same interests. Both interaction and cooperation have combined to create new entries or edit existing pages.

What one has to do is to approach the information with caution: someone may hurt other people on purpose introducing false or misleading content. To avoid inappropriate material it has been developed a sort of guide which helps editors in wiki-ing (see Wikipedia:Etiquette). It provides several principles from which new users can start to understand what a wiki looks like and what characterizes it as a genre too.

The language used is mainly formal: it has to be impersonal without voicing personal impressions or any particular point of view. Sayings are avoided and the use of standard English is preferred. A bit of formality is demanded too.

Wikis are addressed to everyone and at the same time to no one: its intended audience is anyone who wants to collaborate and contribute to add any sort of information regarding certain topics. Working on a wiki is almost like playing in a team: “players” don’t have to forget they’re not alone! They don’t have to be rude but always polite even when someone objects to or modifies their work.

One can see a wiki as a forum where people can exchange ideas and openly discuss about them. This doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone agrees with everything said by others: one always has to be critical! I consider wiki as a good training for life and one of the best exercises for our mind.

Alice

Photo taken from: Flickr

WIKI WIKI

What is a WIKI?

Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser; it supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages. Moreover, wiki software lets its users comment on and change one another's text. Like many simple concepts, "open editing" has some profound and subtle effects on wiki usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting and that encourages democratic use of the Web even by non technical users.

Let’s have a look at WIKIPEDIA…

Perhaps the best-known use of wiki software is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia using the model of open-source software development. The website takes its name from the software that powers it, known as a “wiki”, which means “quick” in Hawaiian. Users write articles and post them on Wikipedia, and these articles are then open for vetting and editing by the community of Wikipedia readers, rather than by a single editor. Just as open-source software has been developed by nonprofit communities, Wikipedia is a nonprofit effort too. Thanks to Wikipedia, anyone can create new entries or edit existing pages, providing their efforts survive the attention of a small group of volunteer administrators.

Avoiding MISinformation

Wikipedia is free for anyone to edit and contains millions of articles on a huge range of topics. The remarkable scale of the voluntary project is, however, sometimes overshadowed by concerns over the quality and accuracy of its pages. It can be the case that certain individuals attempt to thwart open-source Web sites such as Wikipedia by introducing false or misleading content. Rather than worrying about every user's actions and intentions, proponents of wiki software rely on their community of users to edit and correct what are perceived to be errors or biases. It has tightened its editorial rules in an effort to stamp out vandalism and the posting of deliberate misinformation. The site, for example, will now require visitors to register before creating new entries.

Wikiquette

Because there are so many wiki authors a sort of guide has been created which has been generally accepted among editors. It provides some principles that are considered a standard to all users. To sum up this standard of conduct we can say that a wiki author has to assume good faith, he/she has to be polite and civil, he/she has to register himself/herself, he/she always has to quote to argue facts, he/she should be prepare to apologize especially in animated discussions and nobody has to forget the so called Golden rule “treat others as you want them to treat you” (from Wikipedia: Etiquette).

My personal impressions on the wiki-sphere

Wiki has turned out to be much more that I’d imagined! That is not to say that I probably didn't imagine a lot but that wiki is even more! A wiki is an easy-to-use web page that multiple people can edit: it can let us collaborate online and share information. Everyone can use it: friends can use it to plan their trips, students and classmates use educational wikis to collaborate with their teachers creating class pages or student pages for comments and updates, coworkers use wikis to run projects, etc. Different people are using Wikipedia to share their knowledge and whether or not they should or shouldn’t be trusted.

After having done my background reading and listened to wikis and its Wikiquette, some keywords come immediately to my mind when I think about wiki:

• open – every time one finds a page which seems to be incomplete or poorly organized he/she can edit it as he/she sees fit. The result is that both the structure and the text content of the site are open to editing and evolution;
• universal - the mechanisms of editing and organizing seem to be the same as those of writing so that any writer is automatically an editor and organizer;
• tolerant (in some ways) - interpretable behaviour is preferred to error messages;
• observable - activity within the site can be watched and reviewed by any other visitor to the site;
• trust – I guess this is the most important thing in a wiki. Trust the people, trust the process, enable trust-building. Everyone controls and checks the content. Wiki relies on the assumption that most readers have good intentions J
• fun – everybody can contribute; nobody has to;
• sharing - of information, knowledge, experience, ideas, views...

Moreover, wiki enables guest interaction and I believe this could be a good collaboration tool and last but not least its power for supporting the work of social networks is great.

Alice

Photos taken from: Flickr