The December issue of District Administration magazine has a short piece on wikis and mentions a couple of K-12 rumblings including Tim’s use of wikis at Lewis Elementary. (BTW, Tim redesigned his personal site at some point and it looks great…one of the drawbacks of RSS feeds.)

This month, they feature Podcasting.

Podcasting is so new that educators and students are essentially writing the book on bringing the technology to teaching and learning. Current applications range from placing audio updates from administrators on district Web sites, recording class presentations for later review, uploading interviews of community leaders and producing online school radio broadcasts. Duke University distributed iPods with school-related information and instructional content to all of its first-year students this year, and similar applications are being discussed at K-12 levels, too. Podcasts are popping up everywhere.

There are growing numbers of online examples of podcasts in schools and resources for getting started, including those listed below. Several online directories are also available, such as Podcast.net, to bring significant programs to the attention of your staff and students. However, keep in mind the content of podcasts is unregulated, which is both refreshing and alarming. It is essential to supervise and establish policies for its use in schools. Podcasting didn’t even exist five months ago, and it is already pioneering powerful new forms of online communications that you need to explore.

Unfortunately, the links at the bottom don’t give specific examples of the ideas mentioned. But hey, maybe some administrators will start learning the lingo at least…
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Here is the Seton Hall wiki.
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In sticking with the Wiki theme, Wikinews looks like a project with some constructivist potential for classroom teachers. Not that they’ve set their goals very high or anything:

We seek to promote the idea of the citizen journalist, because we believe that everyone can make a useful contribution to painting the big picture of what is happening in the world around us. The time has come to create a free news source, by the people and for the people. We invite you to join us in this effort which has the potential to change the world forever.

Ok, so let’s think about this…a news feed that is created by communities of reporters each of whom can add sourced content to flesh out the story. There is a review process by which the information is vetted. You have published articles where corrections can be made for a period of time. And they are archived for future reference.

How cool would it be to create such a space in a school, where anyone could contribute what they know that can be verified, and where accuracy is pursued post publication? What would that teach about journalism…since reporters don’t really need to go to J-school anymore anyway?
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Jim Rusconi was someone I met at Building Learning Communities this summer, and it looks like he’s one teacher that’s taken blogs and wikis to heart. He’s been keeping up in his own Weblog, has been trying out Moodle with his kids, and now looks like he’s set to use a wiki to construct his own Computer Graphics class text.

I’m going to be really interested to watch and see how that develops since I think I’m on the verge of dipping my toe into those waters as well. I’ve been working with one of the Media Lit teachers and talking about a wiki text for the class. Seedwiki, by the way, looks like a pretty powerful application. Each page has it’s own discussion list, you can get any changes via e-mail, update pages via e-mail, and password protect the pages. You get three wikis and up to 50 pages total for free…nice!

Oh, and by the way, I stumbled across this class wiki that is a great example of the potential of the tool and also a great resource for me in my Instructional Technology postition. I just love some of the ideas for collaborative recipe books and cross Atlantic video collaborations…
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(Via Alex Halavais) It seems doubtful that this will stay up for too long, but you have to check out this very cool app which automatically links text in BBC News articles to Wikipedia. It looks just like the BBC page, but, for instance, any where the name Tony Blair shows up, it automatically creates a link to the Wikipedia entry. How cool is that? Imagine if students read news articles like this…don’t know about the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? No problem…just click the link.

I really, truly love this stuff.
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Ken writes about what writing for Wikipedia involves:

1. Clarity, organization, accuracy — basic reporting skills.
2. Teamwork — collaboration skills.
3. Analysis — intellectual skills and the drive to use them at a high level.

He’s decided to collaborate on a post about the poet Donald Justice. And he’s hoping that wiki-writing will push his own writing in some productive ways.

I’m thinking about my “Teacher’s Toolbox” workshop coming up in a few weeks, of challenging the teachers who take it to create a post for Wikipedia. Since it’s 10 hours over a couple of weeks, I may start with Wikis and have them create the post by the end of class. Maybe I could even get them to collaborate with each other. I mean, isn’t this what teachers should be doing anyway? Sharing their knowledge and expertise in writing? The more I think about it, the more a Wikipedia entry might be the best way to start them writing for publication online.

Of course, this means that I’ll be modeling the task…let’s see…how about an extended entry on…Ernie Banks? (Please…no comments on the haircut.)

Colin Brooke at Syracuse has some great thoughts about the recent brouhaha about the accuracy and trustworthiness of Wikipedia. How can we trust it, some are asking, when anyone can go in and write anything about a particular topic without editorial scrutiny? Suddenly, studies are springing up to check the accuracy of the posts. People are posting nonsense at Wikipedia to see if it gets edited out quickly or, god forbid, remains a part of the entry for a longer period of time thus confusing and misleading those who access the information. Ghastly.

If I sound cynical, it’s because, well, I’m cynical. Colin nails it when he says that we start with the totally wrong premise in this whole conversation, namely that

Authority/trustworthiness/reputation/credibility is something that pre-exists the research.

This is one of the most interesting changes that blogs and wikis are bringing about, the idea that we must learn to seek our own truths and not just rely on the interpretations of truth by others. The read/write Web by it’s very nature creates unedited texts that are going to have more and more influence and impact on how and what we read and believe. And, it requires us to think about new ways to teach students (and ourselves, for that matter) to find truth. Colin says it better than I can:

Believe me when I say that I’ve looked, and I have yet to see the writing handbook that doesn’t assume that the only valuable information on the Internet is that which mirrors the “real world.” Credibility (in this model) is to be validated, through reference to a “real world” identity, rather than tested or explored via multiple sources. There are a gazillion sites for verifying the credibility of web sites, very few of which offer the simple insight that dates back to Aristotle at least: credibility is something you earn and develop, not something you simply have. When we ask our students to do research and to prepare the results in written form, we are teaching them to earn credibility through breadth and depth of research. You don’t earn credibility by citing an “authoritative source,” whatever that means. You earn it by testing your sources against one another, understanding what the reasons are for differences of opinion, and figuring out how to resolve them or to choose among positions, etc. In other words, authority should be something that each of us assigns to our sources, not the other way around. It is the result of research, not a prerequisite.

The advantage of sites like Wikipedia is that much of this back-and-forth (as Liz explains at Joi’s site) is visible and public, and in that sense, Wikipedia offers students a chance to watch credibility-in-action. “Trustworthy information” is indeed important, but perhaps more important is that we offer students a chance to see how trustworthiness is developed, to see the conversations that may ultimately result in Encyclopedia Britannica articles. Rather than asking students to plug “authoritative quotes” into 5-paragraph containers, why not ask them to take a topic on Wikipedia, and research its validity? And if they find that there are pieces missing, why not encourage them to contribute? You telling me that stringing together blockquotes from authorities is going to teach them more about research than participating in a wiki might?

Amen to that. A wiki is a perfect tool to teach kids about finding truth and developing trust. Regular Weblog readers know that trust is something that has to be earned. It takes time for someone to be added to the blogroll. We’ve always taught students to assume that trust with textbooks and encyclopedias; if it’s in print, it must be right…right? But times are changing, and I would bet that as the Web’s influence continues to grow, truths are going to be challenged to an even greater degree, and it’s not going to be so easy for students to find the right answer or right quote. That has huge implications for education.

Rob Lucas, a sixth-grade teacher in Rocky Mount, NC has started a wiki for teachers to share lesson plans, files and experiences. It’s a great model for how I’d like to present a wiki for articulation in my district, but heck, maybe I’ll just point everyone to Rob’s space. His wiki got a mention in a Christian Science Monitor article, and while I’m not positive, it might just be the first mention of a K-12 wiki in a major press piece. Cool!

One thing I really like about it is that it has a comments function which shows up once you register. Not exactly sure what the registration is for, but…

Anyway, a nice early model to watch. I Furled the site, added Rob’s feed to my Bloglines account, and am thinking more about Wikis today. This is still just too much fun…

Ken has a great idea, with an especially loud “Amen!” to the last line:

I’m thinking of asking students to contribute an article to Wikipedia this semester — has anyone tried this with a class? We’d want to study the site and describe the traits of an excellent piece there, then work through some drafts. All in keeping with my new goal of making something of use to others in every class. Stop assigning things meant to be thrown away at the end of the semester, I tell myself, or at least cut back on that practice.

I was showing Wikipedia to one of the supervisors this morning and he said, “Hey, a wiki would be great for articulation.” Yes! Since our high school is a district unto itself, it’s a struggle to communicate very well with our sending districts. A wiki could be a very cool tool for this…

…in about three years. Let’s say this supervisor wants to give it a try. The first articulation meeting is in November. Maybe I sell the district supervisors on the idea. Training happens in February. With any luck, those supervisors play and add to it in the spring. Next fall, they set up training for their teachers. Spring of 2006, everyone is required to work collaboratively on one “project,” say aligning the ways we teach the Core Curriculum Content Standards in say, Life Science. (Go on, click the link. It’s great reading…) Maybe that’s successful. Fall of 2006, other such projects covering the rest of the curriculum are divvied up and maybe, just maybe by summer of 2007 we’ve got something usable up and running.

Not to say it’s not worth the effort, but I’m just trying to be realistic about the pace of change and the amount of educating that’s going to have to happen. I’m way too impatient…

Here are some snippets from a widely linked interview on Slashdot with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Good stuff:

But the things our community is producing are different. There’s no cost to switching from an outdated old encyclopedia to Wikipedia — just click and learn, and there you go. You can switch before your friends switch, but the knowledge you learn will be perfectly compatible.

And the key word there is outdated. I’ve been consistently amazed at how quickly the community contributes entries on newsworthy events or people etc.

I think you’d be pretty hard pressed anymore to find topics that are in Britannica that we don’t cover at all. It’s still not that hard, if you look around a bit, to find rare articles in Britannica that are better than our article on the same topic. But it’s getting harder all the time.

And

It is my intention to get a copy of Wikipedia to every single person on the planet in their own language. It is my intention that free textbooks from our wikibooks project will be used to revolutionize education in developing countries by radically cutting the cost of content.

This is still such a cool idea to me. I mean think about a time when a classroom of students comes to some new understanding or truth about a particular topic and can contribute that to a collective text of truths. It IS revolutionary.

Basically what I think works in a wikis is to trust people to do the right thing, and trust them as much as you can possibly stand it, until it hurts your head and makes you scared for what they’re going to break. Because that is what works

Oy. This is a high school…

And by the way, you can download the whole 633MB Wikipedia database here. Just in case you need it offline…
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Ok, so I’ve got a wiki space to play with. Yay! But I have no clue on how to edit the template. Boo! (Somehow “Wrichard, the free encyclopedia!” isn’t really cutting it.) So, if anyone knows how to get under the hood and start playing with the code, could they puhleeese point me in the right direction???

Steve is showing off wikis at the Building Learning Communities conference and he created one for us to play with (or vandalize.) It’s interesting to hear the reactions of teachers, and it’s generating some good thinking. Alan is talking about how this would be a great administrative tool for people to hash out problems and discussions before meetings. Some fear about what kids might do, but also some good ideas about how they might be used in the classroom. And now we’re looking at Wikipedia.

At dinner last night we were talking more about wikis and their potential. I know there has been some back and forth here as to the potential implementation and scale in a K-12 setting, but you can’t deny that there are some huge possibilities for implementation that are very, very cool. It’s constructivist to the core, and it’s collaborative in ways that most teachers haven’t even considered yet.

I always perk up when I see any of these tools being discussed in the K-8 realm since I would love to my high school students come to class with some online publishing experience. Just so happens that in my wanderings today I landed on wikiweb.org which is “exploring uses of wikis within K-6 education.” Very cool!
A little digging suggests it’s put up by Eric Unangst of the Berkshire School District in Burton, Ohio. (Dig around his site a bit and you’ll see all sorts of other great resources and ideas.) At any rate, it appears Eric is looking for collaborators.

A teacher who I have mentioned here often was picking my brain about wikis and how he might use them in class. We were talking specifically about the idea of having students write a collective text for the Media Literacy class that each subsequent class could build upon and update (a la the WikiBooks site.) It’s such a cool concept and constructivist learning at its best. And it’s made me start learning more about the best wiki sites and formatting and all the stuff we’ll need to figure out before we put our collective toe in the water. Oughta be interesting.

Great thing is that a number of sites have been pointing to the wiki that blogger J.D. Lasica has set up to assist with the editing of his upcoming book “Darknet: Remixing the Future of Movies, Music and Television.”

Goal: In the spirit of open media and participatory journalism, I’d like to use this wiki to publish drafts of each chapter in the book. I hope you’ll participate in this effort by contributing feedback, edits, criticism, corrections, and additional anecdotes, either through the comments field below or by sending me email. Feel free to be as detailed as you like or to insert comments or questions. After all, you’re the editor. (And remember, this is for a book manuscript, not a finished online document.) If you make a couple of helpful edits, I’ll mention your name in the book’s Acknowledgments (and buy you a drink next time we meet up).

Request: This is an experiment in trust. Feel free to dive in and make all the changes you think are warranted. I’ve opened this up as a public wiki, rather than a private space. Feel free to link to this main page from your blog, though I’ll also ask at this early stage that people not excerpt material or dissect any of the material in detail because we’re not at the public discussion point yet.

And how easy is this:

How to proceed: It’s simple. Select a chapter there on the right. If you want to make an edit or insert a comment, hit the Edit This Page button.

I went into edit mode and started reading, and to be honest it felt really weird having the ability to CHANGE stuff that he had written. (I didn’t change anything, by the way.) I’m wondering how high school students will deal with this situation. But I mean, the possibilities are endless…a wiki newspaper that everyone contributes to. A wiki yearbook. In fact, our school is celebrating its 50th anniversary in a couple of years, and we’ve started preparing the archives. What about a wiki archive that anyone could contribute to? Hmmm…

The burning question I need to dive into right now is how to set up a wiki with peer review before publishing additions or changes…

First of all, the periodic Manila quirk of not allowing comments reared its ugly head on my last post, so I want to make sure Tom‘s response doesn’t go unnoted.

My experience (and I do have some actual experience with wikis at our school) has been that teachers like wikis simply because it allows them to easily make new pages and add content.

Like everything else, it would take a constant push to get people to actually use a wiki consistently. It would pretty much need to be someone’s job.

Wikis also take a lot of gardening. Constant pruning and reorganizing. That also needs to be someone’s job.

The collaborative aspect of wikis is conceptually difficult for teachers to grasp and dicey in the political structure of a school. At best you end up with inline comments, which ultimately have to be edited into the text of discarded by the gardener.

I’m glad someone has some actual experience to draw on. Now all we need is a job description for the “Blog Wiki RSS Pusher” position. (I’d apply…)

Somewhat ironically, Dan Gillmor released Chapter 7 of his book today and it deals with, what else, Wikis. In fact, it’s one of the clearer overviews of the technology that I’ve read, and it’s motivated me to think seriously about maybe doing some wiki-ing at wikitravel.org. (Hey, maybe I could enlist a whole bunch of people who live in Hunterdon County to add to and edit my beginning entry at some point.)

Anyway, here’s a pretty insightful passage from the book:

It defies first-glance assumptions. After all, one might imagine, if anyone can edit anything, surely cyber-vandals will wreck it. Surely flame wars over article content will stymie good intentions. And, of course, the articles will all be amateurish nonsense. Right? Well, not necessarily. The open nature of Wikipedia has been its greatest resource, and it has emerged as a credible resource…Similarly, Wikipedia draws strength from its volunteers who catch and fix every act of online vandalism. When the vandals learn that someone will repair their damage within minutes, and therefore prevent the damage from being visible to the world. In such an environment, the bad guys tend to give up and move along to more vulnerable places.

It’s a pretty appealing picture…but I still wonder if it would work with kids…but apparently Aaron Campbell has not doubts.

And did I know about this? Wikibooks…”free, open content textbooks and other classroom texts.”
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The more I read about Wikis, the more I know at some point I’m going to have to take the plunge. But I think what’s making me hesitate more than anything else is that I keep thinking about how to implement one with teachers at school, and so the big question becomes if teachers won’t blog, will they wiki? On one hand, I think maybe they will. The collaborative, working to produce a useable resource aspect of wikis does have its appeal. No pressure on one person, collective experience and knowledge, free sharing of product…all of those things are selling points. And the potential to use it in the classroom is clear, but if you think people have concerns about blogs and kids… And, all of this comes down to a time issue for most. I guess I’m just going to have to recruit some volunteers and dive in at some point.

Kairosnews points to an interesting observation by Glyn Moody about the future of wikis and blogs:

The seriousness and high quality of the Wikipedia entries emphasise the main strength of Wikis: a depth born of multiple authors working together to hone material. This contrasts with the blog, which shines in its ability to offer one person’s quirky and brilliant insights across what may be a vast and often contrasting spectrum of subjects. (For those who want the best of blogs and Wikis, there is also the Bloki hybrid.)

Both undoubtedly have their place in the online ecosystem, but the underlying dynamics that drive a Wiki seem likely to ensure that it will prove more enduring…

I think that articulates the professional potential pretty well.
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“Turn to Press for the official record, Blog for social context and Wiki for the public record.”

Every now and then I still get blown away by how people are using these technologies, and this is one of those times. Ross Mayfield posts about the difference between the media, blogs and wikis when it comes to covering world events, and he uses the recent Spain bombings as an example. Certainly, there were hundreds if not thousands of media reports on the bombings, and no doubt Weblogs had their share of coverage and insights. But when I took a look at the Wikipedia page that had been created for the event…well…see for yourself.

I’ve always had difficulty in understanding the usefulness of wikis, but I think I’m starting to get it. Funny thing is, I’ve always thought that it was too easy for people to just come in and muck things up. (My wife asked the same question when I showed her the Wikipedia post.) And sure enough, when I accessed the list of updates, someone had done just that, blown up the whole post. But about four minutes later, someone came in and restored it. Pretty cool.

Hard to imagine that you could get a more balanced view of what is happening when you have dozens if not hundreds of people editing and updating and fact checking along the way. There’s much more to think about here, obviously, but this is a great example of the power of collaborative media.
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Doug Holton has started a Wikipedia type site focused just on educational technology. He’s got three sections for collaborative construction: LearningToProgram, ClassroomTechnology, and LearningSciences. A great idea to which I may have to attempt some contributions. Now tell me, do Wikis have RSS?
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