Thing 23

Final Reflections

In my leisure time (what little of it there is) I like to design and make jewelry. Before learning this craft I had never heard of crimping pliers. They are used to “crimp” a small bead at the ends of your beading to ensure that your necklace or bracelet doesn’t come apart. There are other pliers that can be used but once I discovered the crimping pliers I would never choose any other tool for that job. The right tool for the job makes all the difference. Thanks to 23 Things I now have a large repertoire for teaching and learning using Web 2.0 tools. I am a happy camper. So today for example when I sat in a meeting where a document was being edited by a group and one person was attempting to capture all the various suggestions for edits and changes, I immediately thought WIKI!!!
My new tools will help me to ensure that various tasks are done well, easier to do, done more efficiently and more likely to accomplish the intended goal. There are some challenges however and I’d like to offer my list of pros and cons.
Pros

• I have an increased number of communication tools at my fingertips
• Time can be saved when multiple contacts are needed to edit a document (WIKI, Google doc)
• Tools allow for easy sharing of work
• Decreases or eliminates distance barriers, encourages global communications
• Data collection widget allows you to hear from those who visit your site
• Don’t have to know HTML, scripts are provided
• Increasing amounts of information are available

Cons

• I still prefer face to face contacts for some tasks. I like to see facial expressions, gestures etc in attempting to fully understand someone’s point
• May miss cues that you can observe when working in person
• Some tools rely on user preferences i.e. tags are not “standardized” and don’t mean the same thing to everyone.
• Information overload!! Bloglines brings in way too much to read at one time if you subscribe to prolific bloggers
• Can’t always control or know who’s responding
• Limited to page, object formats if you don’t know scripts or HTML
• Information overload. 2 cautions: increased information does not guarantee increased wisdom and all information presented does not necessarily meet “standards”. How do you know information can be trusted?
• Lots of advertising on some sites
• Equal access is not available for all stakeholders
• Sometimes difficult to control who sees or has access

That’s my 2 cents worth. Now I will make some choices of which tools to get good at and explore them more. Hey 23 Things, what’s next? As always, thanks for listening. Leslie

Thing 22

OK, here's my wiki https://knowtes.wikispaces.com/ . What a great way to collaborate. This is more than just self-expression (which is what blogs allow you to do and then others respond). This is "here's my work" and now it's your turn. Change it, add to it, revise it, edit it, delete it (scary) but I WANT you to put your 2 cents in. I would imagine that you have to be ready not to "own" whatever you put out there. It's amazing how differently people see things. I learned that with tags. I never cease to be amazed at what people put under certain tags?????? At any rate, if I had a class of students I would definitely use wikis. This is a tool I would choose as a teacher and then go deep with. As always, thanks for listening. Leslie

Thing 21

Exploring the wikis done by students, schools, classes shows there is no limit to how students can be challenged. One called Aristotle had an outcome of shifting responsibility for learning from teacher to student. http://aristotle-experiment.wikispaces.com/ Browsing the pages revealed some pretty heavy duty topics and student work. Comparison of platforms of presidential candidates done in a blog, Pros/Cons of the death penalty in a wiki, as well as more traditional topics Moby Dick and Romeo and Juliet in wikis. The products are not as polished as in some other tools but the student learning is obvious.

Wikihow is a neat project too. I'd like to write and add an article. Thoughts on the collaborative writing tasks still leave me with a bit of hesitation when it comes to edits without borders. A comment about accidently deleting someones edits caused me to worry a bit. Still I'd like to try it a time or two before forming a final decision. As always, thanks for listening. Leslie