Andreas Lund and Ole Smordal of Informedia gave a talk about a (young) student classroom project that made me think of Wisdom Tools, the story-based e-learning company Marty started. They were talking about how the teacher in their study disappeared under the barrage of page content the kids were creating, and wondering what ways they could get them to stay present in the site without getting in the way of the creativity.
Andreas started off with a Michael Bakhtin quote I am about to butcher (Google isn’t helping me tonight):
I live in a world of others’ words. And my entire life is an orientation in this world, …
A sucker for collective power, it really resonated.
Their two classroom projects involved wikis to record the details of imaginary towns. “Our” USA was meant to be perceptions by young Norwegians of the U.S. Funkytown was an imaginary place that needed to have everything invented, from money to mayors to the prices of a good pint down at that corner pub. The plan was for teacher to comment on all pages, but the rate of page creation was overwhelming. In fact, the researchers tried to get them to stop and go back to using meta features, like editing of existing pages. The kids were just too darn prolific, and it became impossible for the teacher to respond to everything (hmmm … I’ve been in that position before). The teacher’s presence online, then, became reduced to the point of being negligible.
The use of wikis in elementary and junior high classrooms is a really hopeful sign for the future. As with general Internet use, the thing that can be done and the general acceptance of wikis will likely be led by those coming out into the adult world for the first time. If students spend any noticeable amount of time working (successfully) with wikis as kids, then to not have wikis about and in use in their jobs and activities as an adult will be the thing that seems strange.
Collective cognition — the idea that new learning emerges when two or more people reach insights that neither could have reached alone, and that cannot be traced back to one particular individual’s contribution — obviously isn’t the only way to learn. There is a lot to be said for individual effort and trusting one’s own resources. But team collaboration just isn’t a normal part of most schools, at least in America. (We are very fortunate to have Carter land in a first-grade class where team learning is used significantly.) Most learning, particularly with writing, is a private relationship between the student and the teacher.
The Informedia guys also talk about Communities of practice (Lave & Wenger) and Collectivity of Practice (Lindkvist). The former is a longer-term thing where knowledge resides in the practices. The latter is transient; knowledge is in the network of agents and artifacts. I was particularly taken with the Lave & Wegner concept because the slide describing it used the word, “mutuality.”
The study found that there was, predictably for new wiki authors, a tension between individual and collective ownership of the content. Wikis are also not suited for very short-term projects; they need some time to develop. And, of course, there is a desire by this research team to give the teacher the proper tools to stimulate and manage the online learning. One of their ideas for future work also included adding a “talking bug” to prompt exchanges on the site. Using a model writer to lead by example on the site might also help guide the collective by giving students something positive to emulate.
For more information, see WikiSym abstract or download the paper.
