Affordances of Wikis - Wikispaces

I must state, that I am finding it extremely difficult to discuss the pedagoical affordances of Wikis and Blogs, as my area in e-learning has always been in Moodle development.  I would usually use these tools as an appendage to the LMS, and not as e-learning in its entirety.  

I started to work on a Wiki Classroom as a building exercise, and became very frustrated.  The editing functions and tools are limited.  I trudged along determined to get the full experience of this tool.  

Here is the link to my work in progress for Assessment 2

Pedagogical Affordances

How to you use wiki as your e-classroom?

Some of the features of wikispaces includes:

• You can make announcements, schedule tasks and assignments, and discuss in your newsfeed at the bottom of the page
• Projects can be created, having optional start and end dates, for assignments and topic areas
• Pages with weblinks, YouTubes, a plethora of information can be added
• Files for learners use and sharing can be added
• Comments and discussions to be added asssisting in socialisation

Technical features, affordances and pedagogy - wikis – analysis of technology

Features of the technology	Affordances (activities and practices)	Affordances (examples of pedagogy and designs)
Ability to organise information and make it easily accessible	Learners able to add to the wiki, review other learners additions to wiki, choose their own learning.	Collaborative (working in groups to construct knowledge): Using an TED activity to start the initial stages of a discussion and asking learners to review their workplace or working environment they are familiar with and comment on similarities in their own workplace Conceptual (developing higher order thinking skills: eg hypothesis analysis): Learners to locate sample documents and then evaluate the design of the documents.  Decision which design best suits the groups requirements. Construct their knowledge of a given topic from information of other learners and bloggers. Story-telling – the learners adds an artefact, learners build a storyline around the artefact contributing to the Wiki.
Ability to share ideas and resources	Learners able to collect information from learners in relation to the set criteria.
Foster collaborative and group work with students	Learners collaborate with other learners and develop a Safety User’s Guide
Ability to encourage independent and learner-led learning	Learners will work independently on tasks initially and then work with team to develop user’s guide.
Artefact (ie the subject of the discussion) can be made accessible online	Learners are able to participate in wikis space or can work independently.

My opinion of Wikis has changed, and I can now see the use in 21st Century Pedagogy.  

21st Century Collaboration has givens learners the opportunity to work across the country and further across the world.  Real world samples are provided, learners work together for a real organisation.  They can tap into their networks for assistance in solving problems, or work independently and construct their knowlegde from their own contributions and contributions of others.

After many of my recent readings I felt motivated on how I could use these technologies to enhance learners collaborate, share, connect with their peers.  Some ideas were quite obvious, working on groups tasks, developing policies and procedures, project plans, guidelines, marketing plans, decision making.

I wanted to then see what other teachers thought of this idea.  As an activity with a group of online facilitators whom I have monthly adobe connect sessions with I posed the question "can your learners use a wiki or blog as an assessment item?".  Besides one colleague they did not believe this was possible. I asked them to delve into the technology, think of an outcome and apply the technology.  The ideas flowed a  little easier.

Fortunate for me, I am learning so much more and have found many more applications to use, but in reality not many of our teachers are willing to try these ideas.  The struggle would be to convince that the unknown is really OK.