A3.2: Chapter 4-Richardson

Traci Girondo

September 7, 2007

Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

TAP: The topic of chapter 4 in the book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms was the wiki. The author focused the content of this chapter towards an audience of educators interested in using the wiki as a collaborative communication tool within the classroom. The purpose of this article was to inform the reader about a wiki, its credibility as an online resoure, and the implication it has on education.

Claim: Will Richardson, the author of this book, makes the claim that wikis are an easy way for groups of individuals to collectively work together to create a database of knowledge. This type of collaboration is beneficial in the classroom setting because it fosters a sense of community among students as they publish and edit information on the web.

Evidence: Richardson supports this claim by first discussing the history of the wiki. The first wiki was developed by Ward Cunningham in 1995 “who was looking to create an easy authoring tool that might spur people to publish.” This is exactly what he created. Wikis are easy communication tools in that anyone publish and edit information contained on a wiki. The individual does not have to have any knowledge of a specific code to edit the content of a wiki page. This makes wikis easily accessible databases of information for vast numbers of people. Since wikis are so easy and efficient to manage this make them very effective communicative tools for the classroom. Richardson discussed in this chapter the use of wikis by students and teachers. The use of wikis within the classroom allows students to “develop and use collaborative skills, negotiate with others to agree on correctness, meaning, and relevance.” From this students begin to teach each other.  By implementing the use of wikis in to the classroom curriculum teachers are creating ways for students become both editors, publishers, and contributors to vast amount of information located on the web.

Connections: Before reading this article I had a vague knowledge of what a wiki was and how to use one. Personally, I have never published or edited a wiki on the internet. From this article I have learned that wikis are easy ways to publish information on any topic that may be pertinent to an individual. I also learned how they can be a good tool to integrate in the classroom. Using wikis allows students to work together to create a database of knowledge. They can all work together to add, edit, and delete content to the wiki so that they have only the most imporant and factual information. In my cd 315 class we are creating a class wiki. I am excited to put my knowledge of the wiki to use and see what comes out of this.

This chapter connected to another article I read on wikis. Both of these articles discussed the history of the wiki, the way to use a wiki, and discussed the use of wikis in the classroom. This chapter devulged a little farther in to the various forms of wikis that are available which I felt was helpful.

This article can be connected to the world of clinical practice in that wikis are a good way for individuals to collaborate on specific subject matter. SLP’s could use wikis to create pages that are pertinent to the field of speech pathology. These wikis could then be used as information tools for clients who may have questions about the field, their disorder, or different treatments. All SLP’s could work together to manage these wikis and make sure that the information posted is factual and up-to-date.

A3.2: 7 Things You Should Know About Collaborative Editing

Traci Girondo

September 6, 2007

7 things you should know about collaborative editing. (2005). Educause Learning Initiative. Retrieved September 6, 2007, from http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7009.pdf.

TAP: The topic of this article was collaborative editing, a group of individuals simultaneously editing a document. The author focused the content of this article to individuals interested in what collaborative editing is and its various uses. The purpose of this article was to discuss collaborative editing in regards to what it is, who’s doing it, how does it work, its significance, its downsides, its future, and its application to teaching and learning.

Claim: The central claim in this article is that collaborative editing is a functional way for people to edit a document all at the same time.

Evidence: The author supports this claim by discussing the advantages of collaborative editing as compared to typical editing. Collaborative editing allows a group of individuals to edit a document concurrently. When doing this each individual working on the document can see who is working on the document and the changes that are being made by that person. The various editors are distinguished by different colors being applied to each editors changes. This allows all the editors to be aware of who is making what changes to the document. Collaborative editing is more time effective than typical editing. With typical editing one document is passed among numerous individuals and changes are made to that document. By doing this many times there will be numerous copies of one article floating around among various people. With collaborative editing all editors can make changes at one time. Each person scans the document and looks for what changes they feel would make the document more clear. This type of editing is also beneficial because it allows all the editors to see what changes have been made. By collaboratively working on one document at one time there is a sense of community that is developed while the work is being done. All the editors are working together to compile a document that is both organized and coherent.

Connections: Before reading this article I had never heard of collaborative editing. I was completely shocked that there were actual collaborative editing tools that allowed people to access one document and then collaboratively edit it at the same time. I found this article to be very interesting because collaborative editing is something I feel would be beneficial to me. The article gave a story about a group of students in a classroom who collaboratively compiled ”community notes” during a lecture. When I read this I thought that this was a great way to work together with other individuals in classes to make sure that all the information was being documented that the professor had said. Many times I miss information in lectures and I have to look at someone elses notes at a later time, but with community notes I would have that information right in front of me. I think collaborative editing would also be helpful in classes where you are required to edit other peoples work. It would take a lot less time if each person in the group could access a certain document and work on editing it at the same time.

This article connected to another text that I read about wikis. These articles were both similar because they discussed the collabortive effort among individuals. Both wikis and collaborative editing allow individuals to change, add, and delete content from a document. Both of these articles also discussed how collaborative tools are being integrated into the educational curriculum. Tools such as collaborative editing and wikis create a sense of community among individuals as they work together on a document to make sure that the information in that document is clear and organized. I found that this article was similar to an article I read on blogs as they both discussed how collaborative tools such as collaborative editing and blogs allow people to connect with other individuals that may in any other way not be able to communicate.

This article connects with the broader world of clinical practice in that collaborative editing could be used to create community notes while watching an observation. While watching an observation it is not possible to catch everything that the clinician and client are doing. If numerous people were watching and taking notes on the same document then it would be more likely that everything would observed and documented in that session. These community notes could then be distributed among the group so that each person had a copy of what had been observed during that session. This type of editing could also be beneficial for SLP’s to use if they are working together with other professionals on a research paper. All the individuals could work together to edit the paper to prepare it for publication.

A3.2: 7 Things You Should Know About Wikis

Traci Girondo

September 6, 2007

7 things you should know about wikis. (2005). Educause Learning Initiative. Retrieved September 6, 2007, from http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7004.pdf.

TAP: The topic of this article was a wiki. Its content was focused towards an audience interested in the use of a wiki as a collaborative communication tool. The purpose of this article was to discuss what a wiki is, who is using them, why wikis are important, disadvantages associated with a wiki, the future of a wiki, and a wikis implication in teaching and learning.

Claim: The author of this article claims that wikis are a tool of collaboration. Wikis allow people to become both the author and editor of information posted on the web. Since anyone can edit and post information on a wiki this makes them very efficacious for collaborative activities such as group projects.

Evidence: The author supports this claim by looking at the ways in which wikis are being used. Wikis have grown from being a tool used by researchers and engineers to a tool that is used by anyone who wishes to engage in a collabortive activity. Wikis have gained much popularity among the education field as they are being used in the classroom for teachers and students to engage in collaborative activities that may not be possible in the classroom. The author of this article states that “educators and students, as well as amateurs and professionals (artists, writers, collectors), have found wikis useful in expanding community involvement and interest in their subjects and activities.” Wikis are also increasingly being used because of their easy accessibility. A person wishing to post or edit information on a wiki can simply push the edit button on the wiki page, type their changes, and then click the save button. For some this may seem like a disadvantage, but in all actuality wikis are very good sources of information. Many wikis are constantly monitored for false information being published. Some even have passwords where you can’t change the material unless you know the password. Safety features like this make the reliabilty of information on a wiki more credible.

Connections: I have only had a limited experience with the use of wikis. I have used the internet database Wikipedia as a resource when searching for information. It was not until there was a controversy as to whether wikis were good sources of information that I knew that anyone could change information on a wiki. Before that I simply thought that  Wikipedia was a encyclopedia published to the internet. Reading this article helped me to realize that wikis can be good sources of information if the information on them is monitored. I now know how wikis can be used to collaborate with other people on specific subject matter.

This article connects to other text that I have read in that it encourages people to use the internet as a way to collaboratively communicate on specific subject matter. I have been reading articles lately on information literacy and the importance of using the internet as an informational tool. These articles encouraged teachers to begin to integrate more computer based activities in to their curriculum. This goes along with the information I read on wikis because it shows how teachers are using internet tools inside their classrooms. I have also being reading information on weblogs. Weblogs and wikis are similar in that they both encourage a collaborative effort to communicate on a specific topic.

This text connects with the broader world of clinical practice in that wikis allow people to collaboratively communicate. In the field of speech pathology there are numerous conferences that people attend and give presentations on specific topics. Using a wiki would allow numerous professionals to work together to create the presentation to give at a conference. Each person of the group would be able to edit and post information on the topic of the presentation at a time that is convenient for them. A wiki could also be used by professors in the field of speech pathology that are interested in creating their own textbook for their class.

A3.3: Framing Essential Questions

Before reading this article I had never heard of essential questions. I know that in many classes we have learned various types of questions such as open- ended or closed ended, but essential questions were not something I remembered discussing. After reading this article on essential questions and their attributes I realized that essential questions are something that I know about because research questions could be considered a type of essential question. From this reading I learned that essential questions  are supposed to spark our interest, engage us in problem solving, and create in us a desire to understand something that matters to us. Instead of answering a question that the teacher has given, the students construct their own question and seek their own answers about that topic. I was surprised when this article said that answering essential questions could take a lifetime. I couldn’t imagine attempting to answer one question my whole life, but I guess in many ways it could be possible to do that. Essential questions are not questions where you can simply find an answer to them. They require a person to invent their own answer. It takes a lot of time for a person to seek information on that topic and then develop their own thoughts and ideas of that question. A person could spend a long time searching for the answer to an essential question because they would be constantly gaining new information everyday on that topic. This makes me think of theorists who develop these theories and then seek out to prove how their theory is valid. I’m sure these people spend vast amounts of time focused on constructing an answer to a question. Once they feel like they have figured it out they publish it for the world to see and then people begin to doubt their findings or someone finds proof of how their theory could not possibly be right. Answering essential questions is something that requires a lot from the answerer, but because that person has the desire to find that information the research will be more meaningful to them.

Reading this article will impact my work in that I now realize that you may not always be able to find the answer to a question. Even though the answer may not be obvious a person should search for all the information they can on that subject and then seek to construct their own answer and understanding of that question. As a student essential questions are something that I am going to be required to answer and now I realize that it does require a lot of work to answer these questions, but you gain more knowledge from these questions. Essential questions will also be something I answer in my field of study as I will be learning lots of new information about topics I have never heard of before. Since I won’t have such a great knowledge base on that subject I could develop an essential question and then seek information on that topic so that I can construct my own understanding of that topic.

A3.3: Developing a Research Question

Developing research questions is something that I have been required to do numerous times throughout my academic career. It is something that I feel I am very knowledgeable on, but also an area that I feel I could use some improvement.  From this reading I learned that certain evaluative tasks should be done to evaluate the useableness of research questions that I am writing. By examining these variables I can critique my own research questions. First I learned that I should ask myself whether the topic is interesting to me. If the topic is not interesting to me, the researcher, then the research will be very labored. Next, I should examine if the question is researchable? If there is not any information out there about the topic then it will be hopeless to try to write about it. Another area to consider is what type of information is needed to complete the research. For example, are statistics needed. It is also important to determine if the scope of information is reasonable. This variable require me to examine whether I will be able to complete all the research in the time alloted before my paper is due. I also learned from this article how to narrow a research question. In many of the research papers I do I have difficulty narrowing my research question. I typically develop a question that is to broad. This reading suggested that when developing a research question that you are specific as to what you are writing on. Instead of writing a research question on hearing aids which is to broad you could develop your research question on specifically types of hearing aids best suited for conductive losses. This narrows the research question and focuses the research to a specific topic. When reading this article I was surprised at how hard it was for me to chose which research questions were written the best. This reading gave examples of research questions and asked you to chose which one was wrote the best. In most cases I did not chose the one that was wrote the best. I chose the question that was wrote with a very broad topic. I think this is an area that I need to work on.

This reading will impact my work in numerous ways as I will be required to write many research papers while in school. From this article I now know what constitutes a thorough research question. I am also able to critique my own research questions so that I make sure I am being clear and consise. Writing research questions will also be helpful in my career as a SLP. Doing research is a crucial part of my field of study. It is what aids in the advancement of speech pathology as new therapeutic techniques are developed. It is our job as future SLP’s to conduct research and develop new theories. It is impossible to write about the research we have done if we do not know how to write a good research question. I feel that this reading has been very beneficial to me since writing is something I will continue to do throughout my life. From this article I became even more knowledgeable on a topic I already felt like I knew a lot about.