Leading Learning Applications

Web 2.0 has become the emerging segment from the array of existing learning technologies. Social Technology has lead to increased collaborative and educational opportunities. Two leading collaborative applications in this segment are Wikis and Google Wave.

Wiki

The first Wiki, which is Hawaiian for “quick”, was placed online by Ward Cunningham in 1995 (Neumann & Hood, 2009). “Wikis are interlinked web pages based on the hypertext system of storing and modifying information” (Neumann & Hood, 2009, p.382).

Wikis initial rise in popularity was because of its use from enterprise to collaborate on documents and projects, such as software development(Andersen, 2005). Their current use is wide ranging, including personal and educational. Wikis have become popular at post secondary institutions and increasingly at secondary schools because of the constructivism involved in the collaborative process of creating a wiki (Neumann & Hood, 2009). Furthermore, editing wikis encourages reflection and the use of higher metacognitive skills. There are many versions of Wikis that have been released since the first Wiki, but the most successful one has been the free encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

Educational perspective on wikis

Wikis encourage a sharing of knowledge, collaboration through editing or creating linked pages, and only require a web browser.
Different types of Wikis allow users to be selective about who can view or edit their wikis.
Users (possibly teachers) are able to see the revision history of a wiki page.
They allow teachers to work collaboratively with students instead of just passing on information.
Because of the numbers of users who edit wikis, public wikis have been found to be quite reliable.
They provide the capability of continually updating and building upon a body of knowledge, which is essential for fields such as Science and Technology.
Wikis allow students with different learning styles new opportunity to excel in different ways.
They can enrich the learning that happens in a classroom in the forms of study guides, enrichment, research projects, or even review.

Wiki Drawbacks

There may be times that students are “reluctant to edit each other’s work” (Pusey & Weiselwitz, 2009, p.510).
Wikis lack the ability for users to discuss and exchange ideas about changes that are made.
Wikis use a simplified markup language, often referred to as wikitext, but it can vary greatly among different types of wikis. This makes moving from one wiki engine to another difficult (Abreu, Silva, Mendes, & Vinhas, 2009).
WYSIWYG editors, which are meant to make editing a wiki simpler, need to be “closer to traditional office tools, so that less advanced end-users are able to extensively use this technology" (Abreu et al., 2009, p.1330).

Google Wave

Google Wave is a new open source environment that is designed to allow real time collaboration. It was “first unveiled in May 2009 and released to its first 100,000 invitees in September, is a new communication protocol, platform, and client designed to replace or supplement email, IM, and online collaboration tools like wiki" (Rethlefsen, 2010, p.32).

A Wave consists of blips, which are messages that can be added, edited, or replied to. It can be edited in real time by any group member, and any addition or changes can be viewed in order with a play back feature. Waves have extensions called robots and gadgets. “Robots can read the contents of the wave and create new blips; gadgets do not participate in the wave, but respond to users’ interactions with it in the wave" (Stuart, 2010, p.32). Google Wave is still in its infancy stage, and has been open to the public for just a matter of days. The are reports that its evolution will allow developers to sell extensions for Wave (Stuart, 2010).

Educational perspective on Waves

Waves allow a nearly unlimited number of collaborators to work on and edit a project (which can include documents, photos, and video) while simultaneously carrying on group and private conversations.
They only require a web browser.
Any member of a group can use a play back feature to see the progression of ideas, edits, and revisions.
Some examples of the extensions are ones that allow for video chat, twitter updates, and polls. "One promising example is Igor, a Google Wave robot (or bot) . . . . [It] can help pull in and cite references from PubMed, a Connotea or CiteULike library, or a web page" (Rethlefsen, 2010, p.33).
Students and teachers are using waves to do things like collaborating on lab reports, setting up study groups, completing assignments, and studing for exams.
A classroom discussion within a Wave encourages increased interactivity, allows for polls and voting, and provides students that are late or have missed a discussion a chance to go back and view the discussion.

Wave Drawbacks

"Many Google Wave users have discovered . . . that as the number of users goes up, even sideline observers, overall performance diminishes” (Rethlefsen, 2010, p.33).
The layout can be difficult to get used to, especially when composing a document while exchanging many messages.
A Wave requires participants to have a Google Wave account.
Google Wave's word processing capabilities are very basic and doesn’t come close to other established products, such as Google Docs.

For More Information . . .

Wikis

Google Wave

Report Card

A Wiki is an excellent tool that can be used for many purposes, such as an information resource and way to build up knowledge. As a collaborative tool, it is good, but has things to work on. Its biggest drawback is the language that is used to create wikis. It's far from impossible to learn, but will discourage many users, especially the less technologically inclined. Wiki's letter grade: C+

Google Wave is new on to the collaborative tools scene and appears to have a very bright future. Firstly, it's supported by Google, which is enough to know that it will be around for a while. Secondly, and most importantly, it is a very good collaborative tool. It manages to blend many of the current tools we now have all into one place. My only serious complaint is that I find the layout difficult to follow at times. When working through putting together a document, it can take a bit of time to find your way through all the comments or blips. However, I do recognize that this is still in Beta form and will should evolve quickly. Google Wave's letter grade: B

Discussion Questions

Now that you have had a look at Wikis and Google Wave, which do you think you would be most likely to use for each of the following scenarios?

You are a teacher who would like to have an online class discussion.
You are a student who is working on a group research paper.
You are part of a staff that needs to come up with the school goals for the following year.
You are a student planning a group presentation.
You are part of a group that needs to plan out a website.

External Resources and References

Abreu, P., Silva, D., Mendes, P., & Vinhas, V. (2009). The Impact of the usage of wikis from a teacher/student perspective in an educational context. Computer Science & Education, 1325-1330.

Andersen, Espen (2005). Using Wikis in a Corporate Context. Handbuch E-Learning. A. Hohenstein and K. Wilbers (eds). Cologne, WoltersKluwer. 5.8: 15.

Neumann, D., & Hood, M. (2009). The effects of using a wiki on student engagement and learning of report writing skills in a university statistics course. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 25.

Pusey, P., & Weiselwitz, G. (2009). Heuristics for implementation of wiki technology in higher education learning. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5621, 507-514.

Rethlefsen, M. (2010). Google Wave: Collaboration Reworked. Library Journal, 135(1), 32-33. Retrieved from Professional Development Collection database.

Stuart, D. (2010). Waving goodbye to email: could Google Wave kill email?. Online, 34(2), 31-33. Retrieved from CINAHL with Full Text database.