On this wiki, I could see evidence of the many characteristics that Richardson (2010) discusses in his chapter. At the top of the screen there is an "Edit" button, so if I felt like there weren't enough vegetarian recipes on here, I could easily add some of my own. There were 4 drop down menus that allowed for browsing the wiki for recipes (by ingredient, by course, or alphabetically), top 10 recipes, other recipe pages, and finally popular pages. There were also quite a few advertisements for shopping and other related businesses that flashed along the side and the bottom of the wiki, which I felt kind of took away from the wiki itself. There is also an option to leave comments on the recipes, and at the bottom of whatever recipe I click on, there is a section titled "categories" so if I want to find other recipes that include cinnamon or vanilla extract, those categories will pop up automatically. Overall, I felt like this was a very comprehensive resource for searching and finding recipes.
In terms of wikis in the classroom, I really enjoyed the Hunt & Hunt (2006) article and its explanation of the dried out research project. I can distinctly remember writing my sources and my quotations on notecards and thinking that this was heartless drudgery in its finest. The authors make a good point when they introduce the multigenre paper being more appealing because it allows for imagination and experience, not just stuffy facts from dusty books and shelves. The benefits of using the Internet as a source for information are outlined, but they also ask a good question - "As literacies expand and change, we have to reevaluate who the experts are. Can we be our own experts, if we get enough help from the outside world?" The assignment that was accidentally created for the students by one of the authors, was very innovative and unconventional. As a student, I would have loved to be an expert and work collaboratively to publish some of my own knowledge on a site like Wikipedia. Wikis are great for this reason - they allow for anyone with (or sometimes without) knowledge on the topic to post their ideas and information.
One example that really emphasized this idea comes from the chapter in Richardson (2010), where news was posted on Wikipedia amazingly fast after the Indian Ocean earthquake in 2004. I thought to myself that the people posting may actually have more reliable information than a news station that was broadcasting the event. In a fairly short amount of time, the entry on the earthquake was edited a ridiculously high number of times, and the information was in fact accurate. Thousands of people worked together to create an accurate account of the event, each editing and posting until they entry reached a desired level of accuracy. This example proves that "everyone together is smarter than anyone alone" (Richardson, 2010, p. 57). At the same time, I think that students would most definitely be more invested in their work because they would know that it was going to be published, and also read by a large audience. If I could incorporate this kind of "writing for the real world" in my classroom, I would.
Despite these potential benefits and uses I could understand some of the frustrations that were voiced in the Wheeler, Yeomens & Wheeler (2008) article. If I did have my students perform research in the vein of potentially posting it to a wiki, I can anticipate that some students will resist because they will want to keep ownership of the material. Making the decision to post their hard work on the web is, at the same time agreeing to let it be edited by others, deleted, added to, and altered in a many other ways. It will also be a nameless entry, which some students may not agree with. I think that in this case however, the benefits definitely outweigh the pitfalls.
Great post, I appreciate your thoughtfulness!
ReplyDeleteThe recipe Wiki sounds really cool, I will have to check it out. I agree that as a student I would have loved to have been assigned to publish, post, and edit real entries on Wikipedia. This is a project that I will certainly consider when I have my own class. I was also amazed at the example in the Richardson text of the Indian Ocean Earthquake information on Wikipedia. This chapter in the text really changed my opinion on Wikipedia as being a reliable source.
ReplyDelete