Mobile Phone Wiki

My engagement over the past week with the Mobile phone wiki was an interesting one. It was an experience to be able to 'talk' about an idea without talking about it. Still being able to voice your own opinion without being interrupted...but on the other hand...when you are faced with a different view it is difficult to read as they disagree with you.

I think this forum reflects three of the four learning theories: constructivism, cognitivism, connectivism. 

This is the case majorly so with connectivism as we are allowing access to a range of nodes of information and displaying it on an online interactive face. Students are able to get resources online and link them to to prove their point.

Social Constructivism is used as the learning that occurs is founded upon social interactions within a community or wiki. Students all palce their opinions, yet they can read others and form new opinions when they see other student's points of view.

Cognitivism allows the process of thinking to occur and mental processing their changes of thought. After reading another student's ideas and opinions they are able to re-evaluate their own and change, agree or still disagree.

Although  Behaviourism could still be counted as included, it is not as much so. It does not targeted for the 'development of higher order thinking' which this wiki exercise would hope to achieve. 

When I initially posted in the wiki I was the first one so I was able to begin the ball rolling, however, when I came back other people had posted and they had differing opinions to me. Not that it matters as we are all different but I felt a bit odd writing something for all to see that wasn't the same as others. If I were in a normal classroom I either would not have said my opinion, told my friend next to me and had a side discussion or if, and I want to be truly honest, got the courage to say my opinion and have enough reasons to back myself up I would have said that I disagree.

I stepped outside my personal comfort box, knowing that I know no one and for the purpose for the exercise I wrote my different opinion - and it wasn't that bad. Apart from that I found the entire process of participating in a wiki quite exciting and engaging. Issues that could possibly arise when using this form of learning in a classroom is that students may not write what they truly think but 'people please' and therefore, not only the purpose of this exercise has gone down the drain but students do not learn. I feel that it certainly does have it's place in the classroom as a very viable learning tool.

Using the de Bonos Thinking Hats as a scaffold provided a range of answers that allows the students, us, to be able to think of concepts that we may not have thought abut before - which in turn allows our own 'higher order thinking' to be developed.