Wikipedia: The Catalyst of Collaboration

Without Wikipedia we would be wallowing from whence we came. 

The World Wide Web was, and still is, a disorganized mess of vast volumes of information. Thanks to Wikipedia there are currently 16,000,000 organized and linked encyclopedia articles in more than 270 languages.  True to its name, Wikipedia is a tool for creating collaborative encyclopedia articles on the world wide web. Today, there are over 91,000 internet volunteers who collaborate and contribute to Wikipedia. This week I became a statistic and became the 91,001 contributor to Wikipedia.  

  

Where To Go From Here

 After a few years of creating various wikis and nings and evening adding a glogster to my wiki, I wanted to challenge myself to learn more.  After speaking with Jennifer in Chicago she challenged me to create a Wikipedia entry for the TLDL program at the U of A, and what a challenge that was. When I began researching the “how to” of Wikipedia I found out that there are 10 steps to getting started with Wikipedia.

1.  Create an account
2.   Begin by editing pages that already existed on Wikipedia and, to be bold.  After all, Wikipedia is in existence because of its collaborative nature. 
3.  Get lost. Quite literally. I was lost in Wikipedia I didn’t know where to begin creating. I thought I knew, until I tried to retrieve my “draft” the next day. I found that the best way for me to learn was to play around with it and ask google when I had questions.
4.  Create A User Page. People want to know who is editing and changing their information and it is only common courtesy. 
5.  Familiarize yourself with the criteria for posting to Wikipedia
6.   Read Wikipedia’s entry of “Your First Article” and start writing. 
7. Post and wait for others to: edit, give feedback, change, and add.
8. Witness first hand collaborating at its finest. 
9.   Challenge those that would be interested in contributing to add their knowledge and understanding of the subject.  
10.    Be thankful for Wikipedia pioneering a collaborative approach to the world wide web and count your lucky stars for those that created an educational and user friendly version.

My Challenge Is Now YOUR Challenge

I created a Wikipedia entry about the TLDL program at the U of A.  After I posted I realized that I forgot to include the word “program.” My husband commented that my title, Teacher-Librarianship by Distance Learning, was a bit deceiving as it looked like a new way of being a librarian. I was afraid that someone might delete my entry because of the false information. I knew I had to change the title immediately.  After quite a bit of research I realized that I was not able to make a change to the title until so many edits had been made, or after 10 days of it being posted. I will be sure to make the necessary change when the time comes.

Knowing that you can’t change the title, I am looking for participants to make changes and add information to the TLDL Wikipedia entry.  My challenge is for the students and professors of the TLDL program to harness their collective intelligence (Berger & Trexler, 2010) by collaborating together to create, edit, and share knowledge about the program.  Apply the knowledge that you gleaned by experimenting with other wiki’s and become the 91,002 user of Wikipedia.

Wiki’s At Home

My husband is an avid reader, and contributor to Wikipedia, and has even created a few wiki’s of his own. One of the wikis that he created was to keep track of his telescope making project. Unlike my husband, I have never used a wiki for personal use. Will Richardson (2010) shared some interesting exemplars of how people are collaborating with wiki’s in their everyday life: recipe wiki, travel wiki, and wikiquotes.  I’m not sure how much I would be able to share on the recipe wiki but I could add a comment after trying some delicious recipes such as the sweet potato salad.

Using Wiki’s in a K-12 Setting

I brainstormed a list of 21^st century skills that our students learn and obtain when using wiki’s and Wikipedia in a classroom environment.

 

Similar to using any other web 2.0 tool in the classroom, it must be purposeful. Before choosing the wiki host, decide on what you want your students to be able to do, what goals and outcomes you are going to achieve, how and if they will be evaluated, if you want the site open or closed, and how you will monitor it, ease of access and navigation, and the option for a wide range of media to be embedded or uploaded.  Thinking about the purpose and the other factors listed above will help you to determine what wiki will be the best for your purposes. Use the wiki matrix to compare the various wikis that are available. 

Ways to use wiki’s in your classroom

•  Have students document, reflect, share, write-about, and upload pictures from a class field-trip 
• A place for students to:  reflect, connect, wonder, investigate and gather information, construct new ideas, and express their new understandings during the inquiry process either as a class or individually
• Create resource aggregators, bibiliographies, and pathfinders
• Electronic Portfolios
• Journals or notebooks to house ideas and brainstorms

For examples of how educators are using wikis in the classrooms check out the following exemplars:

·

·         Educational Wikis

·         The Impact of Climate Change: created by a high school science class 

·         The Flat Classroom Project: Two classrooms from Bangladesh and Georgia USA collaborated to analyze the ten societal trends from the book, The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman  This wiki continues today with classrooms from around the world connecting and collaborating. 

·         Wikis for Collaborative Storytelling: Using wikis for collaborating during the writing process. 

·         A Grade One Classroom Wiki 

·         Wiki’s in Education: Jeff Utecht has created a space for educators to add and view how wikis are being used in the classroom.  

  

Wikis in the Library

             As we move forward into the 21^st century, teacher-librarians are shifting their virtual and physical environments to reflect a learning commons, and we are looking for ways to create a collaborative and participatory culture in our school libraries.  The library is a perfect place to begin modelling the social aspect of learning because “students who are learning in schools influenced by the innovations of visualization, democratization of knowledge, and participatory cultures need different skills that prior generations” (Lemke, C, 2010, p. 267).  School libraries and teacher librarians can model and collaborate with other teachers to immerse students in authentic learning.  Fred Newman (Higher Education Academy, 2009) states that there are three key elements to authentic learning: deep inquiry into the subject matter, relevancy beyond the school day, and knowledge construction.  With carefully designed learning tasks through web 2.0 tools such as wikis our students will be ready to thrive in a participatory society. 
 

Many school libraries use wiki’s for students to share what they are reading, review books, add content that they have created, host book clubs, and link to blogs. Here are a few exemplary library wikis:

Bookleads created by Joyce Valenza

SLMS library wiki 

Nancy Keane's Wiki 

Librarians Can Show Students How to Use Wikipedia

Start teaching students how to use Wikipedia rather than not to use it. Wikipedia is one of the top ten websites worldwide (Shapiro 2010). Rather than questioning the reading level and the authorship of Wikipedia we, as teacher-librarians, must begin teaching students how to navigate on the web, to be able to recognize the readability of a web page, provide them with other search engines, and to teach them how to search effectively.  Wikipedia can be a great starting point and can lead students to primary sources. We must teach our students to be critical consumers of information, verify and check the accuracy of information found, and to recognize when an article is incomplete.

 

Wikipedia can also be used as a tool to extend our students learning out of the classroom.  Will Richardson (2010) asks us to consider how Wikipedia can be used for our students to share new knowledge with a larger audience in an authentic way.  Out of curiosity I tried creating an account for Wikipedia at school and I was not allowed to. I have not had an opportunity to see if I could create an account for Simple Wikipedia. If so, I think that I am going to consider ways in which my students can share their new knowledge and understandings with a larger audience.

Wiki’s As An Essential Tool For Learning Leaders

In the book, Web 2.0 new tools, new schools, it is recommended that in order to support professional development we must “develop alternative forms of teacher professional development that embed the social networking tools we want teachers to consider using” (p.109).   As I consider ways to create a learning community within my school I must remember to use web 2.0 tools such as wikis to communicate and connect with staff. Last month, I created a wiki for the Home-Economics teachers of Saskatchewan for them to share information and lessons that they are creating with students. The teacher-librarians in my school division are discussing ways in which we can share lessons, and ideas using a wiki. Before beginning to create anything we must sit down and discuss our focus, purpose, and vision for creating a teacher-librarian wiki.

I know that I have grown professionally by accessing other educators wiki’s such as:

http://schoollibrarywebsites.wikispaces.com/

http://digitallyspeaking.pbworks.com/Voicethread

https://schoollearningcommons.pbworks.com/

Without Wikipedia Would We Be Where We Are Today?

I believe that Wikipedia has served as a catalyst to creating the world of web 2.0 where users can share, collaborate, and edit content. Without Wikipedia, would wikispaces, pbwiki, and other wikis have evolved?  Instead of wallowing about where we would be without Wikipedia we must continue to create and design authentic learning opportunities for our students to become critical and creative consumers of information that can evaluate, make  new meaning, and collaborate with others to make sense of the world in which they live.

References

Berger,P & Trexler, S (2010). Choosing Web 2.0 tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited.

Richardson, Will (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classroom. Thousand Oaks: CA: Corwin Press.  

 

Bellanca, J & Brandt, R (2010). 21st Century Skills:Rethinking How Students Learn. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

(2010). How Elementary Is Wikipedia?. School Library Monthly, 27(2), 22-23. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.