go to the wiki for reference
My (Worrying) Experience
To be honest I didn't like the experience of the online wiki. Visually it didn't appeal to me, the amount of information that people contributed was overwhelming (so Much INFORMATION) and the rough and tumble style made it feel very unorganized, even thought the organizing tool of De Bono's hats was there. Also the formatting tool is not very user friendlyI'm under the impression that the activity is designed in this way so that everyone can contribute in a way they can feel most comfortable, so that means that it is going to be very, as Gary said, "Messy". I'll try just to accept that sometimes it has to be messy so people can try things in different ways in order to find the best way for them.
Oh and one more thing. When I was making a contribution someone else was as well and after I finished they did so as well and overrode my changes. This is something that might need to be looked at in the wiki itself.
The learning Experience
The Impression that I had was that this exercise is like and information gathering activity like a brainstorm but in an online format. The use of De Bono's hats gives everyone the chance to give their point of view or if you don't have a point of view a choice of how to give one, so catering for a wide variety of learning styles.
(I like the touch of some people adding their own pictures of the hat they are using - Man in the Yellow hat)
area I feel is missing is the other types of learning styles like spacial and aural. having some options or instructions on how to share pictures or audio tracks would benefit a number of people, but that might be something you workout with the students either before hand or if it's the first time you are using the wiki tool, apart of the learning that comes out of the online tool.
I have tried my best to find an economical way of adding an audio file but I might need to do some more research on imbeding them.
Have a listen to how we went though:
Connecting to the Readings
Even with all my criticism I still think it's a good example of and effective use of TPACK, or more specifically TPK (Technological Pedagogy Knowledge). But I think as the technology gets better and more connected with different formats the pedagogy will resonate with the variety of learners out there
I agree with your comments Oliver on using the mobile phone wiki, it seemed messy and organised with very little instruction as to how to use it, and I couldn't access the links to De Bono's hat links which left a lot of what I was doing up to guess work!!!
ReplyDeleteYes I agree with you and Michelle.
ReplyDeleteWhat has happened in school land in the past is teachers select the tools that give them the best outcomes. They seem to have their favourite tools. Even now when the national curriculum seems to be reducing the range of choices for teachers there is still room for you to argue for the best digital tools that are not clunky and off putting to students because they find them confusing.
My suggestion to all in this course is to start building a checklist for assessing digital tools.
What do others think?