On wikis again

To speak some more about wikis, I found that Kristen Fouss produced a nice mathematical wiki.

The introductory page specifies that this wiki, a collection of notes or a summary of the content of some courses, was made by the members of her classes.

When I saw it first, I was quite dumbstruck. And to imagine that I spent two hours (network slow, someone not remembering his email password, someone else not remembering his wiki password, two sharing the same computer, one kicking the power supply cord and switching off someone else's computer, the evacuation test, the assistant passing with some notices...) in the lab just to make sure that all the students of a class could subscribe the wiki they were going to use... How long could it take to produce a wiki like Kristen's? And the exercises? After devouting a whole month's time to create a kiwi, are the students capable to solve all the exercises they are supposed to solve by the syllabus?

Then, after a moment's depression, I go back to my practical philosophy, and repeat my mantra: a wiki is a tool serving didactics, it is not the heart of what you are doing. Which, in this case, means: if you succeed, it's ok, if not, it's ok all the same.

In this post I summarized the conclusions of a survey among the participants of my four classes to the wiki work last year. In my opinion there are some important points in favour of it being a fruitful way of working.

1. First of all it's interesting to notice that all students found positive, motivating aspects in the wiki activity just done.
2. A greater part of the students, besides, appreciated the collaborative work that wikis make possible. This, actually, is not a necessary feature of wikis, but rather of the work organization behind it.
3. Also interesting is to see how some students were able to reflect about their own learning with this work: some did express opinions about the usefulness of this didactic methodology in the different kinds of learning involved.

I think that, by themselves, these three objectives are worth pursuing as priorities and justify the adoption of a didactic methodology, independently on other reasons: if I have tools capable of 1) motivate students in their study, 2) lead students to live building knowledge in a collaborative way and 3) raise their attention about the state of their learning, a critical capacity towards their learning, I would say that these tools are to be used.

I am perfectly aware about the fact that a wiki, by itself, is not the solution of the problems of didactics. And I am equally aware about the fact that there are other tools capable of leading to the same objectives, even a much-despised frontal lesson, if well prepared and managed. And this last thing actually comforts me in particular, seen the sometimes awful conditions of ITC facilities in some of our schools.

Nevertheless, I maintain that working on a wiki, today, is an excellent learning experience, both for students and for teachers. I have no problems admitting that, knowing only marginally the use of wikis prior to this experiment, after it I installed on my computer a local wiki (Mediwiki), which today I widely use both form my school and home stuff.

And the same might happen to students. The added value is not in a better organization, but in being able to transfer what they learn at school in their daily life, to integrate working, researching, cooperating, elaborating, building, analytic and syntetic methods in their daily actions. These are all things that OECD-PISA will never be able to measure, but that, in my opinion, are worth double the amount of the notions that are received and soon forgotten in our schools.