Weekly Summary (Week 2_Robinson)

EDU651: Collaboration & Learning in a Virtual Environment

The biggest takeaway for me during week 2 was learning about Wikis. What an awesome tool for two-way interaction (collaboration) among students, corporate executives…just people in general. And just like blogs, there are free sites out there so that anyone can set up a wiki in minutes for whatever subject (discussion) they wish. Of course, for added bells and whistles there are always fee-based plans. I think wikis are more difficult to learn than blogs, but the learning curve is not insurmountable as one can be relatively comfortable with the wiki software in a short period of time. I learned that there are three primary types of wikis – knowledge construction, critical thinking, and contextual application (West & West, 2009).

I set up this blog for the first class of my master’s program, so I plan to use it for future courses, as needed. Currently, I maintain a blog and website for our PTA, so I am comfortable with both of those technologies. In addition, I "tweet" on occasion, so I was familiar with Twitter, too.

Using web 2.0 tools in k-12 requires creativity and strict security measures. The technology teaching tools discussed during this week serve various student learning styles and teaching styles, too. I can certainly see why wikis will be integrated in classrooms in the future.

Reference:
West, J. A. & West, M. L. (2009). Using wikis for online collaboration:
The power of the read-write web. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
ISBN: 9780470343333