Mobile Phones - Wiki

To me a wiki, similar to Wikipedia, is a site that can be edited by anyone.  It is a digital learning tool that gives you the opportunity to make the pages private (so only a select group can see and edit), or public (giving access to everyone on the net.  This week I explored the benefits of using and contributing to a group wiki.  This wiki used 'De Bono's 6 Thinking Hats' (see http://www.debonothinkingsystems.com/tools/6hats.htm for more information) to gather and sort information about  mobile devices in education.  The 6 Thinking Hats encourages looking at particular topic in 6 different ways, or with 6 different thinking hats on.  These include:

•   Negative - Why something may not work 

•  Process - used to manage the thinking process

•  Creative - Possibilities and new ideas

•  Intuitive - feelings/ hunches 

•  Positive - Optimism 

•  Objective - information known or needed.

After exploring the wiki it was evident what a wonderful learning tool it makes, especially in the opportunities it creates for collaborative learning.  Everyone is able to add to the page with their own opinions and/or information they have found and this makes the page very interesting to read.  I might have come to the wiki with set ideas about mobile learning, how it can be positive and how, at the same time, it can have negative attributes as well.  However, after reading so many different opinions, that I hadn't even considered I was amazed at how many different positive and negative implications it could have. 

I found the forum to be particularly reflective of the learning theories, constructivism and connectivism.  Constructivism, according to McInerney & McInerney (2006. p.572), is "Piaget's view that children construct their own understanding through interaction with their environment.  In learning, constructivism should emphasise the active role of the learner in building understanding.  Constuctivist programs emphasize individual initiative and creative thinking in learning."  Connectivism is learning theory for the digital age, emphasising that learning occurs in a number of ways, and that knowledge can be gained from many areas. Because of this, I feel that the forum was reflective of both constructivism and connectivism as knowledge and understanding was gained through interaction with the wiki. 

I really enjoyed being involved in the wiki, it opened me up to some new ideas and allowed me the share my opinions with everyone else. I believe that wiki would make an amazing tool for student learning as it would be a way that they could discuss and work on group assignments in a digital way that is able to be monitored by the teacher.  One of the best things about students being able to use Wiki's  to work on their assessment tasks is that the input of each group member can be monitored, and so the teacher is able to make sure that everyone is pulling their own weight and contributing to the group.  At the same time, this would be a drawback for students without internet access at home, as they will not have the same opportunities to work on the tasks as other students.

'De Bono's 6 Thinking Hats' provided a great scaffold to  support a collection of perspectives.  As it didn't focus on one particular view on mobile learning, but rather forced the participants to think about different aspects of Mobile Learning as well.

Reference: 

McInerney, D, M., & McInerney, V. (2006). Educational psychology constructing learning ed . Pearson Australia: Frenchs Forest. NSW