2004 Article Notes

From WolfWikis

Jump to: navigation, search

1 A-G
2 H-N
- 2.1 My Brilliant Failure: Wikis in Classrooms
- 2.2 Negotiating Access within Wiki: a System to Construct and Maintain a Taxonomy of Access Rules
3 O-U
4 V-Z
5 Page Links

A-G

Aiming for Communal Constructivism in a Wiki Environment

by Heather James (2004)

Educational Blogging

by Stephen Downes (2004)

top of page | bottom of page | ↑ | ↓

"While nobody can say for sure just how many students are blogging, inside the classroom or out, it seems clear that their numbers are equally impressive." (16)
"But a blog is also characterized by its reflection of a personal style, and this style may be reflected in either the writing or the selection of links passed along to readers. Blogs are, in their purest form, the core of what has come to be called personal publishing." (18)
"First, teachers use blogs to replace the standard class Web page." (18)
"Second, and often accompanying the first, instructors begin to link to Internet items that relate to their course." (18)
"Third, blogs are used to organize in class discussions." (18)
"Fourth, some instructors are using blogs to organize class seminars and to provide summaries of readings." (18)
"Finally, fifth, students may be asked to write their own blogs as part of their course grade." (18)
"What needs to be kept in mind here is that with respect to blogging tools, anything other than the entry field is a bell or whistle. Since the essence of the blog is found in individual, dated entries, the essence of the blogging tool is the entry field." (20)
". . . the potential for conflict between a blog writer and an institution’s administration remains. In addition to posting copyrighted or protected information, students can get into trouble for libelous content." (22)
"Despite the risks, teachers and students alike feel the benefits make blogging well worthwhile, if for no other reason than that blogs encourage students to write." (22)
". . . weblogs break down barriers. They allow ideas to be based on merit, rather than origin, and ideas that are of quality filter across the Internet, “viral-like across the blogosphere.”" (22)
"It seems clear that although blogging can and does have a significant and worthwhile educational impact, this impact does not come automatically and does not come without risks." (24)
"As Jeremy Hiebert, a Web designer and graduate student in Canada, comments, “I’ve seen evidence of this in courses with required e-portfolio or reflective journal elements. . . . As soon as these activities are put into the context of school, focused on topics the students are unlikely to care about much, they automatically lose a level of authenticity and engagement." (22) *"Despite obvious appearances, blogging isn’t really about writing at all; that’s just the end point of the process, the outcome that occurs more or less naturally if everything else has been done right. Blogging is about, first, reading. But more important, it is about reading what is of interest to you: your culture, your community, your ideas. And it is about engaging with the content and with the authors of what you have read—reflecting, criticizing, questioning, reacting. If a student has nothing to blog about, it is not because he or she has nothing to write about or has a boring life. It is because the student has not yet stretched out to the larger world, has not yet learned to meaningfully engage in a community."(24)
"The process of reading online, engaging a community, and reflecting it online is a process of bringing life into learning." (26)

Educational Wikis: Features and Selection Criteria

by Linda Schwartz, Sharon Clark, Mary Cossarin, and Jim Rudolph (2004)

Embrace the Wiki Way!

by Matt Barton (2004)

"Now, with all this said, let me posit that the wikis I have been discussing are "true" wikis. We might define a "wiki continuum" in which the left post was constituted by these free, anyone-can-edit wikis, and the right post was constituted by private, password-protected wikis."
"You see, the further you get from the ideal wiki I described above, the further you get from the "wiki way" and the very features that make wikis exciting in the first place. Therefore, quit trying to make wikis do what you could do under the old paradigms, and try instead to think of ways to use "pure wikis" effectively."

Enter the World of the 'Wiki'

by Chris Hayes (2004)

Extending the Wiki Paradigm for Use in the Classroom

by Chien-min Wang and David Turner (2004)

H-N

My Brilliant Failure: Wikis in Classrooms

by Heather James (2004)

". . . there is a great potential in this tool to be completely disruptive (in a good way) to the classroom setting."
"To really use a wiki, the participants need to be in control of the content- you have to give it over fully."
"It seems clear to me now that you cannot just change the tool- you need to look at your practice as well. Being so open, a wiki does not have any inherent properties that will instantly make a knowledge-building community. It depends not only on the software configuration-- for example whether certain areas are locked or whether you make templates for layout—but also on the social norms and practices around the wiki. In a classroom setting, this means the practice of the teacher, and the interactions of the students."

Negotiating Access within Wiki: a System to Construct and Maintain a Taxonomy of Access Rules

by Andrew Lincoln Burrow (2004)

O-U

Social Commentary: Wicked (Good) Wikis

by Stowe Boyd (2004)

Social Networking Systems and Wikis Engage the Social Customer

by Christopher Carfi (2004)

A Socio-Technological Approach to Sharing Knowledge Across Disciplines

by Sébastien Paquet (2004)

Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with History Flow Visualization

by F. Viégas, M. Wattenberg, & Kushal, D. (2004)

Taking a Walk on the Wiki Side

by Brian Lamb (2004)

Teaching and Learning Online with Wikis

by Naomi Augar, R. Raitman & W. Zhou (2004)

"Wikis can be used to facilitate computer supported collaborative learning, CSCL. CSCL, first noted in the early 1990s, is the development of collaboration by means of technology to augment education and research. CSCL promotes peer interaction and facilitates the sharing and distribution of knowledge and expertise amongst a group of learners (Lipponen, 2002). Collaborative learning exercises are student centred and enable students to share authority and empower themselves with the responsibility of building on their foundational knowledge (Myers, 1991). Students can use wikis to create a set of documents that reflect the shared knowledge of the learning group. Wikis can also be used to facilitate the dissemination of information, to enable the exchange of ideas and to facilitate group interaction."
"As time passes, multiple authors edit and update the content of the document and gradually the content becomes a representation of the shared knowledge or beliefs of the contributors (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001)."
"Tracking is useful for wiki administrators as it allows all wiki updates to be monitored and student participation to be assessed."
"When users are able to login to a wiki and be authenticated, the recent changes page will attribute the changes to a specific user name, rather than the more common method of listing the anonymous user’s IP address."
"The first step was the development of a set of four clear usage guidelines. Powazek (2002), advises that usage guidelines should be short, simple and written in a positive tone."

Towards Emancipatory Use of a Medium: The Wiki

by Anja Glaser (2004)

top of page | bottom of page | ↑ | ↓

"With the increasing commercialization, the net became and is becoming more or less a one-way medium for advertising."
"Working with a wiki provides a “quick and easy way” to produce content in the WWW and to collaborate via internet."
Wikis can be use for a ". . .web based encyclopaedia. Wikis are also used to provide and publish tutorials and FAQ-lists for software (e.g. German Smalltalk User Group), dictionaries (e.g. Wiktionary), and sources for expert information (e.g. JuraWiki). They can be used as an alternative medium for discussions to forums and mailing lists, serve as a tool for brainstorming and provide a platform for project organisation and documentation.
"The key idea of a wiki is that any page that can be viewed can also be edited."
"Technically, thus, wikis are a set of dynamic web pages."
"User participation is vital to the success of a wiki web, and so various measures are taken to faciliate contributions. First of all, wiki pages do not use HTML as their base but have their own, simplified markup language, which resembles the signs used in email communication to indicate emphasis."
"Secondly, the internal link system is simplified."
"Thirdly, there are various pages to encourage users to participate. There are a few easily accessible introductory or tutorial pages and one page called SandBox, where new users can try editing a page without actually changing any “real” content. Furthermore, many sites contain pages that indicate recently edited, most visited, or wanted pages as well as search functionality to give the users entry points for their contribution to the wiki and handle the emerging complexity."
"As in real life, there is a need for social behaviour."
"Centralized organisation within media production gives a few people the power to decide on who may publish, what is published and who may receive."
". . . centralized power over the media means control over who may receive the published information under which conditions."
"Wikis, however, are a good example of decentralized use of media. Many"
"In most cases, however, wikis are administered by a group of people with equal rights who control each other and whose work and decisions are subject to all users’ discussion."
". . . for those who do have access in the sense of receiving pages, it is also rather easy to create and publish content within a wiki. First of all, no own server or webspace is needed, since the data is hosted within the data basexx of the wiki. Second, the tool for viewing and editing a page is the same, namely a web browser. Therefore, no new skills concerning the handling of a software have to be acquired. Third, editing a page is as easy as writing plain text. To add some structure, new pages or layout, a very simplified markup language is used, which is easy to handle."
"With their egalitarian structures wikis allow each visitor to contribute to the wiki in his own personal way: whereas some will only read and use the wiki as a reference from time to time, some will return to the list of changes regularly, others might add texts or do some markup like linking texts. With so many possibilities given to the participants they have the freedom – and the responsibility – to contribute in those ways they think are best suited for them."
"The content produced collectively is more likely to meet the concerns and issues of the community since it has its sources in a social interaction."
"It is important to note that the main goal of an entry in a wiki web is not to depict individual opinions but the view or the facts a group of people, at best all the “netizens”, holds to be true. A wiki page can therefore be described as a never finished summary of an ongoing discussion."
"In the process of collaborative work, in contrast, feedback has some indispensable functions. To begin with, it gives the author a feeling as to whether his work is accepted or not and provides him with the appreciation he needs to go on. Secondly, it is also a part of the production process as every comment contributes to the publication."
"For media production in order to become really emancipatory, it is necessary that the means of production, the media infrastructure, is controlled by the public."
"This means, a wiki system is centrally hosted on a server and the person or organization controlling this server also ultimately has control over the wiki – they can just switch it off. Nevertheless, since the content of a wiki web is also free, there can be copies of the data base that are distributed all over the net."
"But while a medium is being developed and even later when it is used, our society puts certain limitations on it that at least make it more difficult to adopt it for emancipatory aims. Concerning wikis those imposed barriers, be it technical, legal or psychological ones, are currently at a very low level, which makes it easier for people to learn, to participate and to create."

Tracing the Evolution of Social Software

by C. Allen (2004)

Using a Wiki for Documentation and Collaborative Authoring

by Michael Angeles (2004)

V-Z

Wide Open Spaces: Wikis Ready or Not

by Brian Lamb (2004)

top of page | bottom of page | ↑ | ↓

"Sir Tim Berners-Lee looked back on the previous decade and lamented: “I wanted the Web to be what I call an interactive space where everybody can edit. And I started saying ‘interactive,’ and then I read in the media that the Web was great because it was ‘interactive,’ meaning you could click. This was not what I meant by interactivity.”" (37)
"That vision of a genuinely interactive environment rather than “a glorified television channel”—one in which people not only would browse pages but also would edit them as part of the process—did not disappear with the rise of the read-only Web browser.1 It’s churning away more actively than ever, in a vivid and chaotic Web-within-the-Web, via an anarchic breed of pages known as “wikis.”" (37)
"Even dedicated wikiheads engage in perpetual arguments about what constitutes true wikiness. But some fundamental principles (usually) apply." (38)
"Anyone can change anything. Wikis are quick because the processes of reading and editing are combined." (38)
- "Authoring software, permissions, or passwords are typically not required. (38)
"Wikis use simplified hypertext markup. Wikis have their own markup language that essentially strips HTML down to its simplest elements." (38)
"WikiPageTitlesAreMashedTogether." (38)
"Content is ego-less, time-less, and never finished. Anonymity is not required but is common." (38)
- "Content “cloning” across wikis—sometimes referred to in non-wiki circles as “plagiarism”—is often acceptable. (This attitude toward authorship can make citations for articles such as this one a tricky exercise.)" (38)
"What’s unique about wikis is that users define for themselves how their processes and groups will develop, usually by making things up as they go along." (38)
"One common way to use wikis is to support meeting planning: a provisional agenda is drawn up, and the URL is distributed to the participants, who are then free to comment or to add their own items." (38)
"Teresa Dobson, an assistant professor of education, is using the wiki space in both her teaching and her research. Her graduate course on technologies for writing employs the wiki as a support for collaborative experiments in composition and “as a prompt for reflection on the nature of online writing and reading.”" (40)
". . . the users decided for themselves how the wiki would fulfill their objectives." (40)
"The structure of wikis is shaped from within—not imposed from above." (40)
"But as wikis make their mark in higher education, the ultimate implications may prove to be far more profound than mere gains in efficiency." (40)
"This concern is largely misplaced. Think of an open wiki space as a home that leaves its front door unlocked but doesn’t get robbed because the neighbors are all out on their front steps gossiping, keeping a friendly eye on the street, and never missing a thing. This ethic is at the heart of “SoftSecurity,” which relies on the community, rather than technology, to enforce order. As described on the Meatball Wiki: “SoftSecurity is like water. It bends under attack, only to rush in from all directions to fill the gaps. It’s strong over time yet adaptable to any shape. It seeks to influence and encourage, not control and enforce.”8 Whereas “hard security” functions by restricting access or hiding pages, wikis save copies of successively edited versions; thus, work that has been deleted or defaced can be recovered with a couple clicks of the mouse." (40)
"It’s undeniably true that determined vandals can make real pests of themselves. But an open environment also encourages participation and a strong sense of common purpose, so the proportion of fixers to breakers tends to be high, and a wiki will generally have little difficulty remaining stable—assuming that people see value in its existence and have a genuine interest in keeping things tidy." (40-42)
"In practice, however, “evolution toward stability occur[s] just as much through cooperation as competition.”" (42)
"Perhaps the most dramatic harbinger of impending wider adoption in mainstream computing is the recent hiring of none other than Ward Cunningham himself by Microsoft." (40)
"As Mayfield notes, “Except in rare instances where design creates function, the more you design the more user functionality you sacrifice. Wikis emphasize both reading and writing. Sure they could be a little more readable, but that would come at a cost for writing.”" (42)
"It’s true that many wikis tend toward plainness, but there’s no reason that more pleasing fonts, colors, and layouts can’t be accommodated through the judicious application of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)." (44)
"Wikis are already making their mark in higher education and are being applied to just about any task imaginable. They are popping up like mushrooms, as wikis will, at colleges and universities around the world, sometimes in impromptu ways and more often with thoughtful intent." (44)
"Perhaps the most common pedagogical application of wikis in education is to support writing instruction. At Teaching Wiki (http://teachingwiki.org), Joe Moxley, a professor of English at the University of South Florida, lists a number of the medium’s strengths for the teaching of writing skills: wikis invigorate writing (“fun” and “wiki” are often associated); wikis provide a low-cost but effective communication and collaboration tool (emphasizing text, not software); wikis promote the close reading, revision, and tracking of drafts; wikis discourage “product oriented writing” while facilitating “writing as a process”; and wikis ease students into writing for public consumption.

In addition to fostering the development of writing skills as they are already understood, wikis may prove to be invaluable for teaching the rhetoric of emergent technologies." (44)

"Jill Walker, a hypertext theorist and prominent weblogger, suggests that whereas online technologies are fine for teaching things that can also be done with a paper notebook, a more important ability “to teach our students is network literacy: writing in a distributed, collaborative environment.”" (44-45)
"Indeed, an instructor could structure and regulate interaction to such an extent that the wiki is effectively transformed into a stripped-down course management system. But doing so risks diluting the special qualities that make wikis worth using in the first place, with the result being, in the words of Heather James, “pumped-up PowerPoint.”" (46)
"With the benefit of hindsight, she concludes that for wikis to fulfill their promise, “the participants need to be in control of the content—you have to give it over fully.”" (45)
"The medium works most effectively when students can assert meaningful autonomy over the process." (45)
"Three common IP schemes presently in use by wiki communities—when they bother to define a policy at all—are CommunityCopyright, PublicDomain, and CopyLeft. A CommunityCopyright policy allows individuals to assert rights over their work while allowing their contributions to be modified within the wiki." (46)
"PublicDomain policy dictates that any contributor to the wiki space surrenders all copyright." (46)
"CopyLeft allows anyone to use the content of the wiki for any purpose and to make derivative works, under the condition that all copies and derivative works are released under the same license as the original. The contributor maintains copyright." (46)
"SecondCopyrightImpossibilityTheorem: “Every copyright policy will be incompatible with at least one other copyright policy in at least one direction. This will occur even where all parties concerned desire the copyright policies to be compatible.”" (46)
"There is no unified set of software characteristics that are shared by all wikis." (48)
"Technical quirks of wiki systems, indicative of the often anarchic programming communities that have developed them, need to be considered before choosing a system." (48)
"Many of the most notable characteristics of wikis—relative simplicity, empowered users, bottom-up organization—also describe other technologies, such as weblogs, distributed communities linked by RSS, and mobile applications." (48)
"Change is happening. What remains unknown is whether educators, institutions, and developers will join (or coexist with) the revolutionary forces or whether they’ll stand their ground and simply be overrun." (48)