Welcome to my blog! I am sure you will enjoying devouring my many pearls of wisdom as the weeks go by...
The two keys terms I took from today’s lesson and added to my mental vocabulary– collective intelligence and convergence. I was extremely engaged and fascinated in the content presented. A few points from the lesson that I would like to share:
· It was scary to learn that sites like Google actually monitor which web pages you click on from their search engines and how long a person spends on that particular page. Even scarier is that Google keep a file of your entire web browsing for period of 18 months.
· There is a side to Wikipedia that I have never looked at before. I did not know that you could view the entire history of the page to see how the page has morphed and changed over a period of time.
· It was interesting to find that Wikipedia, in comparison to Encyclopedia Britannica, is surprisingly accurate with the content of the pages.
· Most of all, I liked that the creator Wikipedia says that his favourite page is ‘List of Fictional Pigs’. This just shows that Wikipedia has a vast range of topics not covered by the standard encyclopedia.
I found it very useful to complete the discussion board exercise a few weeks ago. As Mark pointed out, Wikis and Blogs have discussions boards built into them. This blog assignment is basically an extension of the basic discussion board template (with more bells and whistles!)
Wikis in Education
I love the idea that a whole class unit could be potentially be completed online- content, discussions, final products- everything! The examples Mark presented gave me some really good ideas. I especially liked the example from the Biology class. The teacher entered the syllabus on the homepage and made links to the key terms. Students then had to, in pairs, investigate one of these topics and employed the use of the discussion board to solve any queries they had. At the end of the unit, the entire class had an accurate pool of information they could refer to for their studies. Another idea I liked was the uploading of photos, cartoon and other images for students to comment on. These comments had to be focused, for example, ‘Which photograph best represents the theme of shadow?’
On a conclusive note, I am off to investigate which Wikipage is my favourite, and see if I can add words of wisdom to any other pages. As they say, watch this space…
9 comments:
Mads, I agree with you. I find the idea that google or any other web resource can keep tabs on everything that we access on the internet creepy. It makes me feel less secure than I did before about the internet and a little more like we are constantly under surveillance... having a big brother moment as I write!
One thing that you just brought to light for me was the concept of convergence; which is essentially what web 2.0 is all about, interactive mediums that use a number of different concepts to deliver an integrated product at the end. Also agree about the fictional pigs. How awesome. If fictional pigs have a place on the internet then surely our students thoughts and deliberations do too.
I see the Fictional Pigs have been a hit! But seriously, yes, the fact there's a page about them does say something about the range of topics covered in Wikipedia. And as you say, Rom, if there's a place online for fictional pigs, there's certainly space for our students ...
I also liked the point made in the blog post that blogs are in a sense an extension of the basic discussion board concept. I think that's a good way of looking at them. Lots of the other tools we'll look at this semester also extend the DB concept in various ways.
Thanks for your comments guys, appreciate you contributing your own 'pearls of wisdom' to the conversation.
I think it was a fabulous idea Mark to start off with the DB- it has given us a base to work from for these blogs (and soon to be wikis!)
Anyone have a favourite Wikipedia page? I'm just trawling through the site as we speak, who knew there were such a range of topics out there?!
Glad you found the DB exercise useful! Thanks to processes of convergence, nowadays DBs are a basic feature of lots of other web platforms including, as you say, blogs and wikis.
I looked at the below Wikipedia page on the weekend as I saw a FB posting from a friend saying she loves this series.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Faraway_Tree
I remember reading this series and loved it and I was trying to find out what the treaty pops that Moonface and Silky used to have for their visitors.
Anyway, I thought the section under "Updates" is pretty interesting because it explains some of the name changes that have been made in recently published versions. For example, the character called Fanny has now been named Frannie. I think it's quite amusing to see that names that were obviously so innocent and pure 80 years ago are now having to be changed because of slang.
Ahh Kate hilarious!! As a child we all used to laugh at the names (Fannie and Dick). It is a shame they changed the names- I'm not too sure Enid Blyton would agree with that decision!
Also I thought I should point out- not too sure if I already have- that I didn't know you could check out the updates. This features acts as a sort of checks and balances- you can see who updates it, what they changed and when.
I'm off to check out the page now!
After creating a blog and seeing comments posted and then commenting back on the posts, like what has happened here on Madisons blog I also realised blogs can be like discussion boards, however they need to be made public to allow discussion to evolve.
True Cindy, very true. Looking at the number of comment on my various posts (10 on one of them) it seems that my fellow bloggers are keen to have their say. What I love about enabling the comments tab is that everyone has a chance to comment and the original author has a chance for rebuttal/feedback/further clarification.
As making it public, I'm not too sure how many people would find my blog interesting, but hey, if there is anyone from the outside reading this, then feel free to post some comments!
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