PbWiki  - Participating is optional      

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from a delegate at an RSC Web Technologies Day session:

 

Web 2.0 technologies and learning

 

While I think these have great potential to encourage group and collaborative learning I do have some significant reservations. Like any teaching or learning method they suit some learners and not others. Many people, myself included,  do not like expressing themselves in this way, finding it too impulsive. I prefer to develop and express my ideas more slowly: I am already drafting and redrafting this comment as I type. And I certainly do want not share my innermost thoughts, or indeed many of my thoughts, with the rest of the world. I much prefer to know and see who I am commmunicating with.

 

I think we need to recognise that for many learners these tools are not appealing or useful, just as "talk-and-chalk", reading a book, or experiential learnng suit some learners but not others.

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Some fair points made above, although I think they apply more to the general theme than this particular tool. (With that in mind, I hope the author will forgive me if I move it in a while to a more general Comments page). Until then I shall stay on this page to argue that it is because 'they have great potential to encourage . . learning' that I have included them and brought them to the attention of people who have not heard of them or who have but don't really have much of a clue as to what they do. I would take issue with 'for many learners these tools are not appealing or useful'. I cannot quickly think of any learner for whom that could be true. Someone on a motor mechanics course, for example, which may be almost entirely hands-on and practical would find a video of a task that could be hard to replicate useful and that might be created utilising Splashcast or a similar tool and shown in a workshop on a laptop via a tutor's blog, perhaps. Whether a tool is appealing or useful does, I feel, depend very much on what the tutor and learner do with it. There may be some duds in the collection and I'll remove them if enough people tell me to but I suspect that there will be far more dud application by tutors of otherwise potentially useful, even appealing ones!

 

I would also pick up the interesting observation that the author was 'drafting and redrafting [this] comment' as he typed. Firstly, there is no reason why anyone should just land on a page and start typing. All in favour of considering what we're going to say beforehand and the first drafts can be scribbled on a piece of paper, typed privately elsewhere or whatever. If you don't want to share views or opinions then it's not compulsory! But, having considered what you're going to say and decided that you would like to share it, it must be nice to know that you can still change anything later! And restrict who sees it.

 

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As this is the Pbwiki page and that tool has been such a key element of this project I must say that I have been impressed by the speed of page loading and the ease with which people have been able to add new pages as well as new comments on existing ones. There have been some problems: several people trying to edit the same page had to form an orderly queue! There was some confusion as to whether to use the Comment button (which adds items as sort of notes in a panel at the foot of a page) or 'comment' as I intended by editing the page - but that was my fault for not making it clear! Images don't always go where you want them and some improvements are needed there. The new editor does make life easier but there still some odd things happening to line spacing and few people can be expected to know about formatting styles. They never used them in Word and, unless they're familiar with web design, may not realise that a black Heading 1 in Arial will appear slightly smaller, orange and in Georgia! I can do a lot to improve the look of pages now I'm learning more about how they work and may well choose another template or tweak this when I get a chance. But generally, Pbwiki gets my vote - and maybe we'll have a system for you to do the voting too soon!!

 

OK space for you now . .

Andrew