Wiki Reflection

Activity Design:

The question of mobile phones provided an engaging hook, as most, if not all, students could relate to the question through their personal experience and knowledge.

The overall design of the mobile phone wiki was very confusing to me as I’m not overly familiar with wikis.  The concept makes sense, but I feel it would be better used for small groups of students.  Having so many perspectives can be a really useful way to instigate a bouncing of ideas and allows for some higher order thinking as students analyse and evaluate the opinions and ideas presented.  However, the sheer amount of input means that there is a great deal of reading involved and this could turn students off from the task.  I felt I had to skim as I was conscious of time constraints, thus feeling like I may have missed some important information and ideas.

I felt that the wiki looked confusing with so many pages of similar titles and whilst I wanted to add comments it was difficult to do so, as I wasn’t sure whether I had to log in, or sign in as a guest because the initial entering information for each hat could be done without signing in.  There was an assumption about our prior knowledge which I feel was not good pedagogy.  Some students become turned off if they are made to feel ‘silly’.  Of course as adult learners we need to equip ourselves with the knowledge necessary to take part, but as this was the first task, some of us may have been unaware of what we would need to know in order to participate.

Students had been asked to keep responses to 40 words but this was overlooked and as such, made the comments too long and in some cases comments combined elements from other hats.  Perhaps clearer instructions regarding this aspect could have been given.

The Theory

This type of activity builds on Vygotsky’s Social Constructivism theory where learning is founded upon interactions.  The activity clearly supports this notion as students form their own opinions and evaluate the opinions of others.  Although, if a student is the first to ‘add’ to the wiki, they are not really using others’ ideas to construct their own.  Maybe having a small group of students express an opinion and comment again after reading peers’ work would support a reflective socially constructed knowledge and learning. The collaborative and cooperative nature of the task also supports the connectivism approach by enabling students to find out whose knowledge may be able to help them with future tasks.

Value of Scaffolding and Learning Outcomes

The use of de Bono Thinking Hats was an extremely good way to illicit high order thinking as students are required to think deeply about the issue of mobile phones in the classroom.  It can be easier to think about each aspect (good, bad etc) separately in order to come to a concise opinion.

For my own learning, I found the yellow hat particularly hard to use.  I had such strong feelings (Red and Black) that it was hard to ‘switch’ hats in order to come up with a positive comment.  However, because I found it difficult, I was more likely to be using higher order thinking skills.  I had to think deeper, so in the respect of ensuring HOT skills the hats certainly provided this opportunity.