Reading response 2

Richardson: Ch. 4  Wikis: Easy Collaboration for All

Since I had recently put up two wikis for our class assignments [LINK] [LINK], I found reading this chapter quite difficult. I kept having to put the book down and edit the wiki, adding stuff to help my group get started, every time Richardson made a point. And then I started getting frustrated that his book was in print form—I couldn’t just hit a hyperlink to the wikis he was describing and travel, no, roam is the better word, at will, like wiki-surfing or something. I learned two things from this reading experience:

First, I got my first intimation that the folks who are foretelling the end of books as a printed medium might be right, an idea I have resisted quite ardently; second, I began to realize that the lack of focus I brought to my reading was due, not to the nature of the reading, the subject, or whatever, but because I already understood what Richardson was saying and was ready to begin experimenting straight away. SO, the million dollar question is that if it was this easy for me to get caught up in the wiki world (beyond Wikipedia) how fast are my students going to be as adopters? I thinking they’ll be faster than me, once they understand what it is about.

I agree with Richardson that Wikipedia id fast becoming the most reliable online source for neutral information, at least in a one-stop-shop. I go there first myself and then use what I learn to proceed further into a subject. I have experienced first hand the dangers of vandalism: once, clicking in the Wikipedia search result for “moon” I came across a most unfortunate photograph that had been put in place of that of an image the celestial body. So I understand that the open source nature of wikis does require a reasonable sense of caution.

But as a collaborative learning tool, for students to “evolve” content and then to possibly publish to other wikis, the idea of using wikis in the classroom is, like blogs, compelling. So compelling that I, myself, became a distracted reader and had to keep updating our nascent class assignment wiki. I guess the only real danger presented by this experience is that students might be too easily distracted from creating meaningful content in the first instance, in their own rush to collaborate online. Digesting information, not publication online, is still their primary goal. Now, if only publishers could figure out how to embed hyperlinks on the printed page, then books might have a more certain future.