Full Circle Associates

Here is my post-session, not-quite-live blog of this terrific session with Stewart Mader and John Willinsky.

(Education context)

Stewart
Thanks to Cyprian (Lomas) to recognize the value of wikis at a blogging conference. The kind of community . Two sided community, a collaborative book of 10 case studies on blogging in education and the community of readers of that book. Design considerations. Like questions during the conversation.

Backstory: a different way of writing. Blogging close to 4 years. In 2005 started blogging about wiki in education. My own teaching. At conferences with others using wikis to do collaborative work. Started an interview series on my blog. Still going now, shifting into the wiki. Conduct the conversation via IM. What a person was doing, aim, how, approach to change something about their current teaching. What grew out of that was this aggregation of disparate knowledge from disparate sources. More than a few blog posts or an interview series. To get enough out of it. Was a blog post the right medium. So thought about a set of case studies. Then maybe since our group is disparate, to this day I’ve only met one of the people in person. The rest all virtually. Get everyone together in some meaningful way we could work together, a collection of individual work and reflection with a common theme flowing through them. We needed a place where we could work on our work and look at others work for suggestions and interplay.

Talk the Talk
Do the book about wikis on the wiki. www.wikiineducaiton.com
Over time, there are 11 case studies, ongoing project. We released the first version last October. Interesting conversation about community and product. This only exists on the wiki. We made that decision. I talked to several publishers. I told them what I wanted to do. Maybe we write this on the wiki, make available to readers on the wiki. Publishers did not like that. Something I could not budge on for the critical reason that to truly look at this inherently social medium which requires participation, you can’t put it into a form tha tonly allows passive consumption, not participation, sharing, reflection.

We ended up publishing it on the wiki. Example of the chapter. Some are open and readers can make changes. Others are closed. Not a requirement – an author decision. The open and closed is a good thing. Some wanted a narrative and explain and sum up. There is not a lot of room for edits. Some were open ended. Ended paragraph with questions to reader. Asked people what they thought about what the author was doing.

At the same time there is a button to export to PDF, so if they wanted to take it, get the tangible output, that’s available too. More flexible than a print book. We do more dynamic things.

Q: What software –

A: full disclosure, I work for the company. They approached me and offered it (Atlassian Confluence) and I wanted it. An enterprise wiki where you need multiple wikis, a sys admin role to manage sites. I liked the software and wanted ot use it. Allowed a level of visual customization to look at lot like my blog. Important to have the wiki look like the blog. One of the complaints I’ve heard about wikis, for a new person it looks too technical and difficult to use. The export to PDF. You find out about this book, never used a wiki, last thing you want to do is to have it feel like a full on wiki. It looks more like a passive website and you can engage how you want. Take the PDF and go away. If you want to read on wiki fine. If you want to comment on page, fine. If you want to change a page – you can do that, the ultimate level of engagement. Options available.

Comment: It is also to the company’s benefit to let him use their software. Good example.

A: I did not ask them, they approached me. A combination of useful software and m. y project relevant. Important gesture. Reflection of recognizing value of the project. Seeing that a lot with Web 2.0 organization. Recognizing the value of using their tools in more authentic ways.

“Publish or perish”

traditional vs wiki publishing. Not trying to slam trad publishing. Anyone adjusting to the realities of the web and the online world. The publishing industry is as well. Tough for an industry with an old structure that has worked well for a long time. Tough thing to be asked to publish a book that will also be on a wiki, editable, not necc. Have to have paid for the book, not proprietary. It is a loss of control for them. To work, there has to be a community around it and there cannot be barriers to participation.

Biggest thing learned, there are a lot of publishing options, creation options for works of intellectually scholarly content. Lots of ways. We’re just at the cusp of exploring new ways. It’s publish or perish still true, but different. Does not have to be in print. A redefinition of that. They key thing is community.

These issues around the ideas of the future of the book. Will print publishing disappear/ Not completely, but one medium vs another is changing. The kinds of books published in print are going to be less information and referential, but analytical and anecdotatl. The information and referential will become richer due to community pariticpation. A group is smarter than an individual in many ways. The more perspectives, more thread of information coming together. A group can keep each other in check so one does not dominate. We see this in wikipedia, Siegenthaller. People ask if wikipedia is too open. In one sense it is a problem, but a community can recognize the problem and change it. Faster reconciliation than in print books.

Q: Communities moderating themselves, keeping themselves in check. Is there common language about steps, when it is time to have a look. Methods for communities keeping themselves.

A: (How we moderate ourselves…) Kind of like a newborn baby. That consciousness is just emerging. Primitive way in some of the discussions about the value in a wiki you an see the version history that people have made. You no longer see just the finished project, what has gone on in the creative process. What personal and social influences. That is the beginning of thinking about it. I don’t think were are there yet. IN it’s infancy. There are still people who, when they find an error on wikpedia, go write about the error rather than fixing it. There are discussions and criticism, but that takes it deeper.

Q: The power of eyeballs. Peer review. How does your wiki book challenge the traditional perspective of expert peer review, vs. the public. Does that lower the scholarly value?

A: to some it probably does and I’ve accepted it. The peer review of this book has been valuable. While writing the book it was the 7 of us reviewing each other’s chapters. Finding the connections. Strengthened the narrative of the book. If we had written it without the wiki, it would have felt like an edited compendium vs flow. Second is the reader peer review – comments and changes. I think that combines in some ways the best ideals of the spirit of peer review and keeping the content relevant. Traditional peer review and publishing has a long time lag. With wiki have peer review from last week. May reduce or call into question of scholarly peer review. The traditional notion of expert Can review it. Combining peer and non traditional peer review, but the traditional is not acknowledge in the same way. No set panel of expert reviewers. Folded into the collective community review.

Q: You are getting the xperts when they WANT to review. Have an interest or passion. I’d trade that for 10- harried reviewers.

Q: As someone using wikis in education, what are your strategies in using wikis in a way that is inclusive, including those who would not otherwise speak up.

A: I’ve been thinking about that question for years. Thought about it first time I used a course management when a student quiet in class participates online. Some people are more likely to do things online, some less. With something exclusively online, we’re still working on ti. There are various levels of interacting with the comment, being part of the community, speaks to all of those kinds of people. If you down load the PDF you have been part of the community. And carried it to other places. If you drop a comment because you are shy of editing a wiki. Could be a watershed moment. The participation builds over time because of different levels of engagement.

Q: Wikipedia – scaring off of newbies, the conventions and level of bluntness.

A: Back to visual design. When you click from blog, not so different. You have choice of traditional wiki syntax or WYSIWYG interface. Not features, as underpinnings that need to be there.

Q: Is there a way to conceptualize the conversation. Wiki is about storing ideas and edits, but there is a conversation running through it. How do you tap that along with the text. How do you capture the conversation, the rethinking of the ideas. That’s where the blog distinction breaks down.

A: The comments on the pages is somewhat like blogging. I tap in by emphasize that posting a comment about a page, looking at the revision history before you edit is as important as the edit. See if someone happened to have taken out what you put in. Make your edit, then make a comment about why you edited. How you acknowledge others and add your voice. Big differentiation between our work with wikis in education and wikipedia. Not anonymous Can communicate as a community.

Q: Other content types?

A: starting to add functionality. Go back to the simplicity focus of wiki. Focus on bare bones text, create a page on the fly. That is what has kept wikis so simple and bare bones. It is coming in gradutally which means it may come in in a better way.

John Willinsky
I’m local, welcome here to the rain and this beautiful building. I’m across campus. It is not actually raining. Technically. So I did not wear my rain pants biking here. So when I turn my back, and notice wet pants, but it was not technically raining.

The other thing, the pleasure of talking to bloggers. I’m coming from a classroom, where I don’t reacall the last time I had standing room only. I’m here to talk about an English Teacher’s class. I prepare teachers to teach HS English.
Stuart set the tone of community. That has nothing to what I’m doing. It is about intellectual property. I’m very concerned about intellectual property, in light of the contribution bloggers are making against traditional forms of IP. About how we are badly preparing students to enter a knowledge ecology about IP except rip burn and download.

These are students with first degree in English and for a year become teachers. Learn how to manage classrooms – see how quiet it is? See, I’m a professional. We are here to prepare them. To think about education in a different way. In two words: GO PUBLIC. Help their students go public and underneath that is intellectual property. Up to now a contested idea between constricted and openness.

This is a very dramatic site – Emily Dickinson. Want to show you what students did. You may not know about teaching, but we’ll work on it and produce something of values to other. You have the luxury of attention and time now, you won’t have that in your classroom. The structure is workshop. The students come in with a rough idea. Local content – AdBusters – an approach to IP that is interesting, playing on notion of parody as fair sue. Filled with Anti-Ads. They bring in things they want to try and we go through them. ON the wiki, we make corrections as we go. We work through the ideas. And they go public with it, contributed back to the profession. They had been a teacher fo r30 minutes and they are contributing to the entire world of teachers, now learning from me.

This student worked through a quick lesson on Adbusters. They bring the materials together. We have IP issues all the time. Legality of using the materials in the schools is different than the university. They have more of a shelter. We have a source indication to recognize the challenge. The legal use of this would be to g o to actual site.

That kind of discussion, of how IP is legally constituted has particular education context. It has intellectual properties. When you bring these ideas together, when you start juxtapose you createan intellectual context that justifies itself.

The other mechanical thing is that students are able to make contributions on the wiki. Much more positive than I would be. They have this thing about “community” (Laughter).

These are the basic principles. Examples of how these work and advantages.

Edgar Allen Poe example – a small video production, use the wiki as a portal to resources to bring materials into the classroom that wouldn’t otherwise. They do it on a fly that experienced teachers might not have. When I student taught it was colored chalk that we broguth to the classroom. Did you see that tree? We need to come in from recess and see this. Antoerh version of student teacher enthusiasm ad contribution to teaching. Shareing of resources through organization and annotation. Encyclopedic work on the comic book. Bring some encyclopedic sense and organize it.

Over time this wiki is becoming an encyclopedic set of lessons. Each new lesson on Hamlet is cognoscent of the predecessors. There is a fascination with the organization of knowledge. 2 students are given the job of organizing the material. They don’t have to create and present, but index. How do we go public? We have responsibilities. We have to add value. For 2 years building lessons. The Hamlet thing is exploding. The class ended in December, and the students are continuing to work on their stuff, to contribute. IF you look at the page index, they are using it as a workspace. We would never give Duncan that much time in our class. That is like a diary or blog

2 other spin offs. The blog spin off. In terms of publishing in the schools. Duncan was using the blogs in the school. Helena found it hard to start a wiki in the school, but it was easy to create blog, so she created workspace for her students to go public. As a display and as a service. Create multilingual indexes of local events.

This is the first, http://journals.sfu.ca/gladstone/ the first grade 8 peer reviewed journal. I’m part of the Open Aspect movement, software to help journals go open access. We thought peer review was tough. Wait till you see grade 8 girls when they do peer review. It is not just about the writing, people. They’ve used this system we designed for academic peer review journals for creating intellectual property.

Philosophical thoughts came in the second year. It replace first years “hot, not, fashion.’ Substantial claims of intellectual growth that peer review journals can create (laughter). Beginning to think about educational responsibilities, connected to a world outside of school, that bring notions of IP as contribution, challenging intellectual claims on IP, that the value increases when it is shared openly. To change it to the properties – plural – students realize, when they continue after the course. To add value. To contribute to strenghthen the materials.

http://wiki.elearning.ubc.ca/tela/Reenai.OTF

Students taking current events seriously in an English literature classroom, often seen as removed from the realities of the world, to see the connections, that challenge th notion of what we are doing in the classroom.

Stuart chimes in
The IP properties of wiki – it is a creative commons license. Each chapter owns their chapter and given license to be part of the compilation. Everyone was writing something of their own and one of its uses was in his book. It can be used elsewhere. They have total control.

Q: The knowledge base is cumulative index.

Awaken the students to intellectual properties – a turning point. Under such pressures in schools for accountability, the no teacher, um, child left behind. A direct challenge to that. The achievement test drains the intellectual quality and properties of the student. These wikis give a much stronger account that A, 69%.

Q: The practice – has it been brought (my wrists started to hurt. Did not blog the final questions and answers.)

Have 2 tech coaches and 2 indexers in the class. ROLES.