Wiki Activities

The four learning theories that have been focused on so far in this course are:

Behaviourism: Behaviourism, sometimes refereed to as "objectivism" has its roots in behavioural psychology. Its underlying premise is that learning is characterised by an observable change in behaviour. It treats the mind as a "black box" (Mergel, 1998), where learning then is a response to conditioning.Students learn through practice, positive reinforcement, and re-shaping what they have learned through the process. They are led through a series of steps in programmed instruction, with a pre-defined end result at each stage. Teachers reinforce target behaviours as they occur, and this reinforcement is gradually withdrawn as the behaviour becomes internalised and automatic.
Constructivism (Social Constructivism): Constructivists believe that learners construct their own reality or at least interpret it based upon their perceptions of experiences, so an individual's knowledge is a function of one's prior experiences, mental structures, and beliefs that are used to interpret objects and events.

Cognitivism (Cognitive Constructivism): Cognitivists sought to understand learning in terms of mental processing. This area of learning theory sought to explain some of the anomalies that emerged from the work of Skinner and believed that by understanding how the brain worked, a better understanding of learning would result. 
Connectivism: Connectivism was proposed by George Siemens as the learning theory for the digital age. It identifies the networked nature of learning with computers and the internet. Siemens stated that it is no longer possible to know everything, that it is more important to identify how and where to find knowledge than it is to know. In other words, the pipeline and its connections is more important than what is in the pipeline.

Looking at these definitions i would describe the mobile phones wiki activity as being most reflective of the constructivist approach to learning. We used the framework of the six thinking hats to organize our own individual knowledge under specific categories. Each opinion is equally valued and the fact that we each have different prior knowledge and experiences that shape our opinions on the topic is excellent. This vast array of knowledge allows for multiple perspectives which is of great benefit to all group members. The characteristics that led me to this belief is that a vast array of opinions is preferred to one definitive answer. This array of opinions was jointly constructed by the whole group rather than one individual.

Reflect on your own personal participation in the wiki. What are the benefits, issues, drawbacks of participating in a wiki like this? How would it contribute to the learning of your students? How did the scaffold support the collection of a range of perspectives?  

So ive participated in both the mobile phones wiki and the ones with the quiz questions. I can understand the benefits of both but ultimately i also see the negatives. The mobile phones one was good in the way that the thinking was structured through the thinking hats, this allowed students to consider perspectives that had the strategy not been used, wouldn't have been put into the wiki. The thinking hats also organized the thinking so that the note taking was orderly and relevant. The negatives on the other hand was that i believe 19 people per group is too large for one wiki table, this numbers aspect was something that i hadn't considered before and therefore would have done the same thing in a real classroom, creating a class wiki. The main points were recorded by the fast finishers, the lazier workers don't read what their peers have written and repeat the points, the slower workers aren't given the same opportunity to contribute to the same degree as their faster working classmates etc. Ultimately i would use the wiki activity in my own classroom but on a far smaller scale, probably with groups of 5 or so.

The quiz activity had its benefits and negatives as well. The benefits was that is was a form of revision which is always good but also the questions were written in the same way as they would be in the actual quizzes, forewarning students as to the level of knowledge they will need as well as being able to carefully analyze a question and the wording to understand exactly what it is asking for. A negative is that because the question pages were available to everyone to see, when you completed them you could look at the other completed ones and their reasoning for their selected answer and be swayed accordingly. A better alternative to this is that i believe is that either the question pages each only be allowed to be viewed by a select number of students or that there are more revision questions, different ones for each group and therefore requiring each group to answer their own questions using the knowledge between them and than finally revealing all the questions to everyone and the LM providing a solution sheet where students can compare the LM reasoning and question answers to their own and their classmates.