Week 6 Board Discussions

Author: Sky Croeser
Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 4:39:15 PM WST
Subject: RE: Official Wiki Activities ThreadDo you guys think that already knowing some coding helps you understand the principles behind wikitext and adapt to it more quickly than someone who’s never done any coding?

 

 

Firstly, I read the other post with the activities and posted my reply in there to activity 2 and a couple other items. This question about previous coding experience is interesting. I personally think that having experience in coding makes a huge difference in how fast you can learn something new.

As DePorter (2001) discussed learning “containing specific core elements that, when used together, empower students to learn faster, more effectively and joyfully”. With this I feel that having a basic knowledge even if it’s related in some fashion can help with learning new information. Making it easier to adapt to new interfaces and concepts.

DePorter, B. (2001). Accelerated Learning. Retrieved October 22, 2009, from New Horizons for Learning: http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/accelerated/deporter.htm

 

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Author: Gwyneth Peaty
Date: Monday, October 26, 2009 12:01:32 PM WST
Subject: RE: Official Wiki Activities ThreadIt’s great to see you are contextualising our activities and discussions in your reading! I definitely like that quote about learning more joyfully. Sometimes students can get very stressed and anxious about learning (perhaps having had bad experiences in school) but, as cheesy as it sounds, I do believe university should be an exciting and positive experience.

 

 

I wonder if it simply comes down to the fact that at school most people feel that it is a forced experience, you have to attend school, whereas, University is more personal, something you are interested in and therefore more enjoyable.

 

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Author: John Skoubourdis
Date: Wednesday, October 7, 2009 2:46:15 AM WST
Subject: RE: Official Wiki Discussion Thread

 

Hi Sky, for me I think what stands out between wikis and blogs, is a wiki seems to be easier to get to the collectively authored knowlegde. Also because of the nature of a wikis neutrality, I personally feel that most people would see wikipedia as credible, compared to a blog and that’s not to say a blog is not credible, especially when it is generated from academics. How does everyone else feel in regards to this credibility statement between wikipedia and a blogg? If you had a choice to begin your research for a specific subject would you start with a wiki or a blog?

hmmm curious John

Every time you do an assignment or an essay part of the task is to research information and part of that process is Critical Thinking, being able to access if the information is a credible, reliable source. A solid way of getting information is to use a primary source to discover a secondary source of information (Marshall & Rowland, 2006). I use Wikipedia in this manner, the footnotes section containing all the referencing is a valuable source of secondary information.

As far as choosing between a Blog or a Wiki for research I use both, for me both are fine as long as I can validate the information found.

Marshall, L., & Rowland, F. (2006). A Guide to Learning Independently. Frenchs Forest: Pearson.

 

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NOTES

Key factors for a Wiki

• An emphasis on collaboration
• Ease of creation and editing from within the web browser
• Intuitive linking between pages
• Restricted use of HTML and non-HTML elements
• Logging of all changes

An important note is that Wikipedia is not a source I can use in academic writing, however it is a useful place to find sources of information.

Week 6 Excercise

In this activity we’re going to attempt to contribute to Wikipedia!

* Go to Wikipedia and locate a topic that you know something about.

* Find something that you believe is missing from the article or that you think should be changed.

* IMPORTANT NOTE: DO NOT VANDALISE THE PAGE. Merely make a small change or addition to the content that you feel is warranted. * Make the change and/or addition. (Don’t forget to log the change you have made)

* Return to the page later in the week to see how the community has responded to your input.

What changes were evident upon your return?

It seems like everyone else that the only page that I really knew something about was my hometown of Belair. After sitting here for awhile trying to figure out what to add, I came up with the famous restaurant here and added to the end of someone else’s sentence. It has been 14 days and no one has edited it yet, or maybe no one has even visited this page. The line I added was…

as well as hosting the award winning Windy Point Restaurant and Café.

Interestingly the first time I loaded the edit page, I thought I was looking at some XML with the definitions up the top of the page. The interface was interesting and I am glad they use mouseovers for tooltips on the buttons.

Looking through the discussion area was interesting to see a couple ‘portals’ and how they have set a scale to the article.