Wikis, Forums and Blogs as Tools for Collaboration and Learning

• Roger Boulay
• David Strasburger
• Christopher Smick

• Rather than create handouts for you, we decided to 'walk the walk' by creating this page in an openly-accessible area of the TCL . . .
  • . . . and to include some things we didn't want to take time to cover in detail during the presentation

• #include <std.disclaimer> (from Dan Reilly now or formerly at Tenacre)
  • Nobles pays us to think for ourselves. The views we express are personal, not necessarily those of the school‚ you'd have to ask the Administration for those! (paraphrased from a number of people’s dot sig files
  • by which in this particular case I mean that we’re not going to be showing you the ‘Nobles way’.
  • None of the three of us presenting this morning think that we have the answer . . .
  • . . . we don't think there is any one answer; we're just sharing what we've found out in our own explorations . . .
• 'Tool du Jour'
  • Teacher to ATA: 'I want to use a blog in my class' or 'I want to use a wiki'
  • It can be more productive if we can recast the conversation in terms of what the teacher wants to do, then think about the best tool
• Almost two years ago now it began to occur to me that wikis, blogs, fora and simple web pages are much more alike than they are different
  • Eventually it occurred to me that it could be argued that the significant difference among simple web pages, wikis, blogs, fora is one of permissions: who can do what to which section of what page?
  • Aside:
    • it’s not just wikis, blogs and web pages; once you start thinking of it as ‘hypertext’, then AppleWorks and Excel documents join the party, too . . .
• Oversimplified 'taxonomy':
  • web page - relatively static page created by 'webmaster' (owner), updated infrequently; read-only for everyone else
  • blog - page created by owner, updated frequently – perhaps even daily; read-only for everyone else
  • forum - page with 'body' section created by owner; read-only for everyone else and a 'comment' section which can be contributed to by everyone else
  • wiki – pages can be created by anyone, added to or edited by anyone else
    • I think of that as a 'classic wiki', because that was Ward Cunningham's original concept (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiWeb). However, even two years ago when I was thinking about this, we were already seeing wiki engines which allowed access controls
  • from Doug Alexander at Charles River to my trying not to use 'wiki' and 'blog':
    • I like your abstraction away from the buzzwords du jour - essentially, it's just moving the same content online and adapting it to the form. The tools themselves are secondary - the only consideration is which framework fits best with the goals. 2006-11-28
• At this point, I was thinking in terms of hosting such tools here and it occurred to me that it would be a nice efficiency if I could find one tool which could be used in all of those ways, rather than having to host several different applications
  • I began looking for a tool which could be configured to allow all levels of access from those of a traditional web page to those of a 'classic wiki'
  • At the same time, I began trying to think of a descriptive name which could be used for such a tool without regard for the level of access
  • Eventually, I settled on 'Tool for Collaboration and Learning' or TCL for short
    • If you know Nobles, you'll know that, acronyms are no small consideration . . .
    • I did consider TLC because of its acronym, but our library already uses The Library Corporation and, more importantly, it seems to me that we hope that learning results from collaboration rather than vice-versa
• So, you'll be seeing some of the ways we use a single 'engine' with adjustable levels of access

• 'This tool has promise and constraints'
• Illustrate:
  • New page
  • creating link to new page
  • entering text
  • using Syntax window in a separate tab
  • creating headlines (and auto generated TOC)
  • creating links - internal and external
  • upload an image
  • upload a file - .pdf

• What's important is the way organization can evolve
• from meeting of physics teachers, 1/19/2007:
  • David Strasburger:
    • Thinking about ways to share files
    • It's an editable web page.
    • If you did something you might forget, you can stick it in here.
    • You can upload files, so you could attach the handout right here (or even iterations of handouts)
  • Jen Craft: Potential to evolve with input from everybody who works on project
  • David: I'm wondering if I can interest you in using this.

• Setting the stage: The goals of a digital design art course
• The wiki as a tool to continue the course beyond the classroom
  • Course software makes it difficult for students to work on projects beyond the digital studio
• TCL as a collaborative journal or sketchpad in an art class:
  • Students can post thoughts, analysis and images
  • Students can react to questions, suggestions and ideas
  • As a tool to teach about working as a group on an art project
• Possible role as a tool in an actual design project.
  • A way to share or consider various “rough drafts” of a brand or identity for a design
  • A way to brainstorm
  • A forum where everyone can see progress on a collaborative design project at anytime.
  • A method to document the various incarnations of design so we can see how far we have come.
  • One more aesthetic forum (webpage) to consider how things appear.

This is an exmple of using the wiki on the fly to share data, and help students split up the job of data analysis.

Confession: since I didn't speak from notes, I don't have any to past in here. I'll try to add some here

Of course, since this is a wiki, you maybe took notes and YOU could post them here! -ds

Concern: someone asked during the presentation about posting video. I blythely said yes of course you can post video. Fact-checking myself now in the afternoon I find I can't make it work. grrrr. I set up the physics momentum analysis page pretty quickly. I wanted students to be able to download the QT clips as files to pull into LoggerPro – and my meory was we had to do something to make the files download instead of just play. I'll see if I can figure this out. Will edit this if I get an answer. (ds 4.18.07)

all OK with posting video: (4.23.07) Chris has reminded me that we set up the MIME table so that .qt files would download to the user and .mov files would play in the browser. Here is an example of video playing in the browser on the wiki. (Scroll down to “getting started”)

• conversation Roger and I had about whether to create special group for Digital Design pages – it came down to a decision about the Benefit – Risk ratio
• Those whose logins give them edit privs could mess up the pages . . . the 'Old Revisions' button lets you see who changed what when . . . and why (if they filled out the field) and go back basically to the beginning of time . . .

• EditMe and Dokuwiki are ‘converged’, but may not offer all the features of dedicated blog or wiki engines
  • (However, the differences among wikis, blogs and forums are much less than the differences among word processors, spreadsheets and database, so the ‘Swiss Army knife metaphor is less valid.)
• With ‘converged’ tool, users only have to learn one interface

• that is a significant question
• factors:
  • control
    • (including ‘branding’ the ‘look and feel’)
  • time
    • trade-off of time to create and maintain accounts for TypePad or EditMe versus the time to ‘take care of’ Dokuwiki and/or Apple’s blog server
• At Nobles, some people are using our internal TCL, some are using external hosting sites (and some are probably doing both)

• URL for 'wiki engine comparison site':
  • WikiMatrix's 'compare them all' page : http://www.wikimatrix.org/wizard.php
• Why we chose Dokuwiki (YMMV)
  • It is a 'converged' engine (it can function like wiki, blog or forum)
  • Can authenticate against Active Directory, Open Directory or LDAP
    • (uses existing accounts - no need to create new ones)
  • Access privileges for pages or directories can be controlled individually by user or by group
  • Stores pages as text files, rather than entries in a MySQL database
    • 'DokuWiki is a standards compliant, simple to use Wiki, mainly aimed at creating documentation of any kind. It is targeted at developer teams, workgroups and small companies. It has a simple but powerful syntax which makes sure the datafiles remain readable outside the Wiki and eases the creation of structured texts. All data is stored in plain text files – no database is required.'
    • Translation of key phrases:
      • . . . eases the creation of structured texts . . .' = when you realise that you wish you'd organised the directory structure differently, you can just drag the folders to where you want them, then change the top-level links
      • '. . . datafiles remain readable outside the wiki' = if server crashes, we can read the documentation on how to fix it by opening backup files in a text editor
  • Open source
  • An active community of developer and users adding features and refinements
  • It is 'Safari-friendly'

• Q and A

• A great place to start getting an idea of what a TCL can do . . .
• http://schoolcomputing.wikia.com/wiki/School_Computing_Home_Page

• (remember that neither of these sites are 'Safari-friendly'. You can view these sites with Safari, but to edit them, you’ll need to use Firefox on Macs or IE on Windows as the browser.

• 'Tour' = http://helpv1.editme.com

• 'Tour' = http://www.wikispaces.com/site/tour#introduction

• First, spend some time with your group discussing what kinds of pages you would like to build. These could be pages intended for students to use for themselves, or for teachers to use to communicate with students (e.g. for syllabus information) or they could be intended for teachers to use in collaboration with each other.

• After you've reached consensus on the type of pages you want to build, spend some time thinking and talking about how two or three such pages might relate to each other (e.g. which pages might link to which) – all of this before you begin working on the computers!

• Finally, go to the page with links to various subject-oriented wiki pages which Fred has built for us: http://we2.editme.com/ and take turns using the laptop actually to build some of those pages. (Don't worry too much about the actual content; that is easily edited and improved later. Concentrate on the mechanics of making new pages, links, and so on.)

• Consider 'comparing and contrasting' EditMe.com and Wikispaces for Teachers (perhaps starting with these links:
  • EditMe.com = http://helpv1.editme.com
  • Wikispaces for Teachers = http://www.wikispaces.com/site/tour#introduction)
• . . . then poking around this page on our TCL to see how it compares and contrasts . . .
• . . . then exploring the 'wiki engine comparison site mentioned above: http://www.wikimatrix.org/wizard.php

• Front page to orginal Wiki site: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki
• Collaborative Software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_software
• Good starting page: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiWeb
• List of possible uses for Wikis (and how to configure a wiki to serve those functions: http://wikka.jsnx.com/FlexibleWikka
• ‘WikiRoles’ http://wikka.jsnx.com/WikiRoles)
• Dokuwiki Main page: http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:dokuwiki