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Christopher Dawson
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Back to school with wikis

By | August 2, 2010, 8:54pm PDT

Summary: Wikis won’t be displacing Blackboard anytime soon, but they provide an interesting platform for learning, teaching, and collaboration.

Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of Google Apps in all of its collaborative glory. Especially with its newly revealed user group permissions, Google Apps represents one heck of a free solution for schools.  However, I’ve recently begun working for a client who relies heavily on wikis for internal documentation and content creation. While the term “wiki” carries with it, for many teachers, the stigma of Wikipedia (whether deserved or not), really seeing wikis in action has rekindled my interest in them as a platform for learning and teaching.

One reader actually emailed me with an idea not long ago that, at first, sounded inefficient in the land of CMS/LMS/Google Apps. Closer examination suggested that he just might be on to something:

The idea is really quite simple: “The most simple thing that could possibly work” (Ward Cunningham) for personal/social learning environments in schools would rather be based on wikis than on an LMS like Moodle…One would have a wiki farm (one wiki for each class and year, and probably an over-all school wiki) with some simple routines and templates. (To do this right would be crucial.)…For the Wiki itself, it would be best to use an Open Source wiki platform (DokuWiki) running on own server, or on a community-driven server specialized in offering wiki-platforms for schools. Possible would be also Wikispaces (as white label service), Google Sites (as part of Google Apps Edu), or even Confluence (because it has all the features of a full & stable enterprise wiki system and is still not expensive).

To create a flow around the wiki and to create a real learner-centered ecosystem, I think one would need few complemenary lightweight web 2.0 services…

He went on to detail how the wikis could interact with layers of social bookmarking, blogging, and microblogging to encourage interaction and a truly engaging learning experience. Clearly, there would be some hurdles to jump to impose standardization and to tie the systems together, but some planning would allow the creation of a fully on-premise (if you wished), rich, modern, open source learning environment.

Next: But you don’t have to get all fancy about it »

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Social Bookmarking Platform, Wiki, Online Communications, Christopher Dawson

Chris Dawson is a freelance writer and consultant with years of experience in educational technology and web-based systems. In 2011, he became the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network SaaS provider.

Disclosure

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson is the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., by day and a freelance writer and educational technology consultant by night. Well, most of his colleagues at WizIQ are based in India, so really he's working with them whenever he can stay awake. He has worked for his local school district as a teacher and technology director, for the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and for Biogen, Inc. (now Biogen-IDEC, Inc.). He has also consulted with STATNet and Cytyc Corporation and retains close ties with X2 Development Corporation (now owned by Follett Software, the supplier of the student information system he administered for several years). Follett is paying him a monthly honorarium to act as a presenter for their "SIS Voices for Student Achievement" community (he produces occasional blog posts and hosts a monthly webinar on the use of student information systems to inform data-driven instruction and school-wide change. He regularly purchases and/or recommends Dell hardware. This is because Dell makes good hardware and has truly committed itself to education in innovative ways, particularly with their "Connected Classroom" initiative. It isn't because he has dealings with the company through his role at WizIQ (which he does) or because they have provided him with long-term loans of a variety of equipment for in-depth testing (which they have). Intel (reference designer for the Classmate PCs he has implemented in his local schools) has provided him with long-term loans of Classmate PCs for testing, as have Dell and Lenovo with their educational offerings. He may report on any of these companies as his experiences with them have direct bearing on educational technology; positive reports are not necessarily an endorsement and he receives no direct financial compensation from these companies or any others. Intel paid all expenses for his attendance at the 2009 Intel Classmate PC Ecosystem Summit which he attended as the sole representative of the technology press. He was invited to attend in 2010 but his wife would have killed him if he spent 3 days in Vegas geeking out and left her home alone with a new baby. Acer provided him with a 50% discount on an Aspire One netbook in early 2009 after he tested it for 30 days through their educational seed program. He liked the netbook at the time but it has since broken and sits unused in his office. Canonical sent him Ubuntu lanyards, t-shirts, and mousepads for his kids. He stole one of the lanyards and proudly hangs his keys from it and occasionally features his 8-year old wearing an oversized Ubuntu t-shirt on his Facebook profile. Gunnar Optiks sent him a pair of computer glasses to evaluate for a holiday gift guide. He is wearing them now as he types this because they never asked for them back and they rock out loud. Seriously - they work brilliantly and make it much easier to spend 20 hours a day staring at an LCD. If they ever asked for them back, he would fork over the $99 and buy a pair. Microsoft gave him 2 free copies of Office 2010 professional, a desktop clock, and a useless book on Office 2010 when he attended the launch of Office/Sharepoint 2010. He occasionally uses the SharePoint lanyard they gave him instead of the Ubuntu lanyard for his keys, but feels dirty afterwards. Adobe provided him with a pre-release version of the CS5 Master Collection for evaluation and ultimately provided a full, licensed copy for ongoing testing of educational applications of this admittedly expensive software. Like the Gunnars, if the license expires or they come out with CS6, he'd actually go out and buy it himself. Which is saying something, because he's actually pretty cheap. Any other companies wishing to send him cool things to evaluate, wear, or otherwise adorn his kids are more than welcome to; he promises to disclose it here if he keeps any of the stuff. Finally, because WizIQ is a virtual classroom and learning network provider, Chris, as VP of Marketing, frequently interacts with, seeks out deals with, and directly or indirectly competes with a whole lot of LMS, SIS, and other Education 2.0 companies. In general, he'll limit his reporting about these companies to news that does not impact his relationship with them or with WizIQ. If he reports on them, it's because what they are doing is newsworthy or worth the attention of his readers and not because he's trying to broker some deal, damage competition, or otherwise advance his position in his day job. LMS and SIS companies, along with other online learning communities, are a pretty important part of Ed Tech. If he stops reporting on them completely, there won't be a whole lot left. He'll be sure to call out any overt conflicts of interest if they are unavoidable. Finally, Follett Software Company pays him a little tiny honorarium every month to present on their SIS Voices webinars and to write the occasional blog or discussion thread for them. Since Follett recently bought X2 (maker of an awesome web-based SIS that Chris just happened to have used, served in advisory groups for, and frequently reported on), this is probably also worth disclosing.

Biography

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson grew up in Seattle, back in the days of pre-antitrust Microsoft, coffeeshops owned by something other than Starbucks, and really loud, inarticulate music. He escaped to the right coast in the early 90's and received a degree in Information Systems from Johns Hopkins University. While there, he began a career in health and educational information systems, with a focus on clinical trials and related statistical programming and database modeling. This focus led him to several positions at Johns Hopkins, a couple-year stint in private industry, teaching high school math and technology, and 2 years as the technology director for his local school district. Most recently, he started his own consulting business and is now the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network provider. He lives with his wife, five kids (yes, 5), 2 dogs, and a hateful cat in a small town in north-central Massachusetts. Although he is no longer teaching, his roles with WizIQ and ZDNet allow him to continue helping students and teachers add value to education with technology rather than merely adding to the bottom line.
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Gerireycarter 12th Dec 2010
I would like to use it as a discussion board for classroom assignments, for discussions with other classrooms around the country/world, and as a way to document the school year.
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Back to school with wikis
billekillten Updated - 2nd Aug 2010
i heard that a month of TV games and computer all say everyday is bad for the brain. i dont know what it would do or if it is reversable.

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RE: Back to school with wikis
s_susan 3rd Aug 2010
Bang on! Wikis are now getting popular in schools. Zoho Wiki extends enterprise level features to education too. Workspaces within Zoho wiki can cater to different class wikis. Three tier permissions on who can edit/view a wiki, workspace, page make collaboration easier.

Thanks,
Susan
http://www.zoho.com/wiki
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RE: Back to school with wikis
murch@... 4th Aug 2010
@s_susan:

Hi I just read your post and added one of my own. I'd be happy to hear more about zoho's capabilities - assuming that physical data storage respects the privacy issues our institution is obligated to.

Thanks.

- Ron Murch -
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RE: Back to school with wikis
murch@... 4th Aug 2010
I read this post and found it intriguing - and relevant to a current initiative on which I am working. I am involved with an Executive MBA program and am trying to find a solid, easy-to-use wiki environment that I can implement for documenting both individual and group learning. (Think "learning log" or "Personal Learning Journal".)

Our University has been challenged to find a good platform for this as our current use of Blackboard and WordPress environments do not provide these features in an easy-to-use context. The four most important characteristics/functions are:
1. Ability to restrict access to each wiki to a defined list of IDs (individual wikis would only be accessible to a specific student and the instructional staff so that ti could be used primarily as a Learning Log for the student in which the instructional staff would engage in "learning coaching". The group wiki would be accessible to only students in the course and instructional staff so that significant contributions to group learning could be documented, tracked and developed.)
2. Physical data storage in Canada or a similar jurisdiction that does not conflict with International (EU) privacy legislation.
3. Ability to export individual wiki content to an off-line environment (Word would be OK, other formats would also be useful) for more permanent storage.
4. Ability to define a "template" for making wiki entries after each class session or learning experience (field trip, guest speaker, readings, etc.).

If anyone else reading this the post has good advice or direct experience with Learning Log (or, even better, Learning Coaching or Learning Journal) systems, please get in touch with me.

Thanks.

- Ron Murch -
ron.murch@haskayne.ucalgary.ca
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RE: Back to school with wikis
s_susan 30th Aug 2010
@murch@...
1. Ability to restrict access to each wiki to a defined list of IDs (individual wikis would only be accessible to a specific student and the instructional staff so that ti could be used primarily as a Learning Log for the student in which the instructional staff would engage in "learning coaching". The group wiki would be accessible to only students in the course and instructional staff so that significant contributions to group learning could be documented, tracked and developed.)

Zoho Wiki Ans: You can have individual wikis and group wikis or individual workspaces and group workspaces within the same wiki. Permissions can be set accordingly.
http://www.zoho.com/wiki/share-collaborate-wiki.html
2. Physical data storage in Canada or a similar jurisdiction that does not conflict with International (EU) privacy legislation.

Zoho Wiki Ans: Yes. http://www.zoho.com/privacy.html

3. Ability to export individual wiki content to an off-line environment (Word would be OK, other formats would also be useful) for more permanent storage.

Zoho Wiki Ans: Export to word and PDF can be done

4. Ability to define a "template" for making wiki entries after each class session or learning experience (field trip, guest speaker, readings, etc.).

Zoho Wiki Ans: You have the flexibility to define your own CSS and create templates according to your needs.
http://www.zoho.com/wiki/customize-wiki.html

Thanks n Regards,
Susan
Zoho Wiki
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RE: Back to school with wikis
JoanVinallCox 4th Aug 2010
I've been using wikis (Wikispaces & PBWorks) for class notes & information plus student (jigsaw) study notes since 2004. (Wikispaces can be made private for $5.00 U.S. a month.) Students also set up Posterous blogs & we all follow each other on them, (and each student can choose their own level of privacy). A two-birds-with-one-stone approach to teach course material AND how web tools can be used. There are also free web tools that teachers can use to allow students to access their marks online. I wonder if university PD people are teaching this or just how to use LMSs.
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School collobration program
Maarek 4th Aug 2010
This would make a great study guide. But you need to realize that the data is from contributors only. Students will add to the wikis only via studying and or for tests. The data needs to be analyzed by coordinators for consistency and that someone is not loading the wikis with misinformation.

The result will be fragmented knowledge based on subjects at hand readily for tests and full of unnecessary garbage about students and faculty or other events that are irrelevant on campus/school grounds.
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About this articles
Gerireycarter 12th Dec 2010
I would like to use it as a discussion board for classroom assignments, for discussions with other classrooms around the country/world, and as a way to document the school year.
HCG Pro

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