Digital Doodling

Before evaluating any wikis it was necessary to decide  who are the users, what would be the purpose of the wiki and what are the expected outcome of using the wiki.

Users/Contributors

The site would be used by high school students, most of whom are experienced techies with their own web pages and online portfolios. However about 20% of the students fall into the newbie category, and can be panicked by too many steps or choices.  The descriptors simple to use and visually appealing should apply to the site.  Contributors should be easy to identify since pages will be initiated by either the teacher or the students. Maintaining and editing the pages will be the responsibility of class. Limiting editing ability to only class members is absolutely necessary.

What kind of information would they be posting?

• Questions about assignments
• A student created glossary or online word wall
• Evidence of understanding concepts, that other class members could review and edit
• Sharing technical information about programs and cameras
• Possibly concept maps
• Images
• Links to student portfolios and online resources

What are the expected outcomes of using the wiki with art and photography students.

• Increase the quality of student work and learning, rather simply gobbling up class time
• Change the organization of the class itself, moving even further into a student centered class culture
• Improve reading/writing peformance of visual art students
• Studies show organizational/classification/comparison activities in the art classroom will improve scores on standardized testing

How did the wikis measure up for these users, purposes and expected outcomes?

Global Classroom’s moodle…

has been easy to set up and normally has very strong technical support. The moodle wiki provided by Global Classroom is very utilitarian, with instructions that are difficult to find, and do not always work well. No tutorials were listed on the hosting site about how to use this moodle tool.  It will be necessary to contact Global Classrooms moodle experts for advice on how to use this wiki successfully. Wiki groups can be organized and editing abilities limited. Students cannot create wiki pages by using a menu, but they can edit the pages. The instruction mention camelcase and bracket links to future pages.  Images can be imported.

Tables can be created, but editing them is difficult. Even though tools appear to allow adding color backgrounds, the color did not show up in student view. Cell properties width and height are set be percentages – however like background color they did not appear to change view. Students could add information below the table, but could not edit material within the table. Because of the difficulties using tables, contrast/comparison and classification activities may be very limited on this site.

The high frustration experienced with this site by an adult does not bode well for the inexperienced students users. If the site is not easy to use, the students will not improve reading and writing performance because they will avoid using it unless it is a graded assignment.

Wetpaint’s wiki…

is on the other end of the spectrum. It provides templates for educational wikis that can be easily modified for high school or grade school level student use. The site has advertisements, but if wiki managers contact the site administrators they will remove the advertising. Templates include syllabus, lesson plan, assignments, study guides, monthly or weekly calendars and more. Images can be easily  added either as uploads or from copyright free image sites. Styles are available and easy to change. Editing is easy with a simple toolbar.

It will be easy for the students to post and complete all the information listed for student contribution. Best of all is  wetpaint’s “to do list” that can be added to the page. Contributors can check the “to do list” and tick off completed tasks. Because of the ease if editing and creating pages, student’s will probably use the site frequently to share technical information, practing their reading and writing skills on a regular basis.

Needless to say at this point Wetpaint wins hands down, or at least hands on the keyboard.