why+wiki?

· LO collaboration & team work · LO technology & communication · LO projects & self directed learning · · added bonus: store assessment tasks, tools and student work, program of work, AQTF, calendars, resources eg 5 new students in week 10! New Students could read class biographies, quickly familiar & discover shared interests, see work students have done… · double added bonus: narrative practice a shared space to upload students digital narratives · digital narratives: eg movie maker – give students a sense of pride and identity
 * Why**: natural progression from collaborative projects: eg newsletters, magazines & complied students work.
 * What**: shared & interactive web page, created by & for students = social software


 * How**: very simple Copy & paste from Word. Students created own 2 page site in 40minutes

“Digital story telling” · integrates written text, images and sound, which supports learning for low literacy students/ NESB students. · Offer a more flexible approach to learning, encourage students back into education and self exploration. Ownership, empowering, non text based learning · The students’ learning is: collaborative, self-paced and builds employability skills such as self management, initiative and enterprise, learning, communication, teamwork, planning and organising, problem solving and technology.

Wiki: free software (or cheap minus ads etc) and easy to master. social software= Giving people a voice; the ability to be content creators and have an independent presence online.

Use wikis for: · No ‘forgotten homework/ disk’! work stored on wiki · Easily identify who & when contributions have been made to Wiki · Class Notes · Student Communication · Lesson Summaries · Handouts · Course Syllabus · Course Links and Resource Notes · Class calendar · A Collaborative space for group projects, shared experiences, photos, · Concept Introduction and Exploratory Projects · Dissemination of Important Classroom Learning Beyond the Classroom · Introductions & Information Page · Student written books · News & blogs In his article titled [|Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute], Jakob Nielsen explores a phenomenon which affects most online, multi-user communities that rely on users to contribute. Participation Inequality is the tendency for most users to participate very little (if at all) and a few members of the community to account for a disproportionately large amount of the content and activity. When studied, it was found that user participation generally follows a 90-9-1 Rule: · 90% of users are "lurkers" (i.e. they read or browse but don't contribute) · 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time · 1% of users participate very often and account for most of the contributions How Does This Apply to Wikis? Encourage students to create own wiki with class links & group projects This concept is very applicable to a wiki environment because contribution is fundamental to a wiki's success. While it is impossible to overcome this type of human behaviour, it is possible to change the participation distribution (i.e 80-16-4 where 80% are lurkers, 16% contribute a little and 4% contribute the most). Some ways to equalize participation in a wiki include: · Making it easier to contribute. Offering a wiki help centre, tutorial information and resources for users can help familiarise users with the environment and allow them to feel more comfortable contributing. Let users participate with zero effort by making their contributions a side effect of something else they're doing (eg assessment task from other subjects eg WAsudan – resource page for WA Sudanese people, · Encouraging editing over creating. For most new users, the thought of a blank white page is frightening. Instead, offer templates and examples which users can reformat to fit their content without having to come up with everything themselves. Eg letter template Reward participants. Identify and reward your contributors. Work LO into wiki / creation. if everyone has a page on the wiki about themselves, they'll feel more connected to the community and become proficient wiki editors by working on their personal pages.

Blogs have even worse participation inequality than is evident in the 90-9-1 rule that characterizes most online communities. With blogs, the rule is more like 95-5-0.1. · **Signal-to-noise ratio.** [|Discussion groups drown in flames] and low-quality postings, making it hard to identify the gems. Many users stop reading comments because they don't have time to wade through the swamp of postings from people with little to say. Your website's design undoubtedly influences participation inequality for better or worse. Being aware of the problem is the first step to alleviating it, and finding ways to broaden participation will become even more important as the Web's social networking services continue to grow.

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Simply put, users bring their own expectations, attitudes, biases, motivations, preferences, stereotypes, and learning abilities to any given design—and thus to the use of your products. The challenge of meeting individual user needs is complicated by the increasing prevalence of social designs. Such designs are predicated not upon a single user, but rather on a constellation of interconnected and interacting users. Increasingly, you’re no longer designing for just one user at a time. By recognizing this fact, you can create substantially improved designs. · User needs online and offline · User motivation o Intrinsic motivation o Extrinsic motivation o Emotional considerations · The importance of user expectations o Expectations and intuitive design o Violation of expectations · Learning and memory (and what happens if your site is not completely intuitive)

A hidden advantage of letting people express themselves is that they become more human, more real. This creates stronger bonds of trust between the members of the community. the wiki becomes a [|Magnet] for all manner of collaborative work.

Magnet
The magnet pattern involves having some content //exclusively// on the wiki to draw users to it. Eg assessment tasks. Putting this content on the wiki and removing it from any other place (for example on an intranet or internal bulletin board) gets users used to looking at information on the wiki.