Reflection One: Mobile Phones Wiki

Design Aspects:

The activity that I will be reflecting on in this post is the use of a Wiki page to assess the use of mobile phones in the classroom using de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats.  The wiki was broken up into the Six Thinking Hats with what each one was and questions prompting responses using that hat.  I haven’t used a wiki before but I found that the wiki was extremely easy to use and navigate, though the only things I did were write and change the font colour.  The downfall to using the wiki however was that only one person could be on it at a time which meant that I had to flick back and forth between the wiki and a word document to know what the questions were and to copy and paste my text in as it was already being used by someone else.  Being a wiki it means that the audience of the website can be broad, it can be something that could be accessed and commented on by a wide range of people from all over the world.  The use of a wiki means that students can see the responses/ information written by everyone and this can improve or refine their knowledge and understanding.  As was mentioned once everyone has written their responses it can be further editing so that all ideas are incorporated and repeated ideas are removed.  This would have to be discussed in class to ensure that students knew that someone else was not deleting their work for no reason.  The use of a wiki can be a great alternate way to sharing opinions instead of class or group discussions as everyone gets a fair and equal time and has more time to think about the questions and find information.

The Theory:

Constructivist theory can be linked to this online activity to show its benefits.  In today’s society how we view interaction is changing, now you do not have to be face to face to be seen as interacting socially with a person, you can do it through a computer, through technology (Woo & Reeves, 2007).  The use of online activities is increasing and can be extremely beneficial to students (Woo & Reeves, 2007).  Meaningful interaction between people, and in our case students, via the internet, or in real life can lead to improvement in learning through an increased interest in the topic as well as an increased knowledge from the collaboration process by both sharing and gaining knowledge (Woo & Reeves, 2007).  The use of collaboration and interaction for students is integral of a social constructivist learning theory (Woo & Reeves, 2007).  In the mobile phone wiki students were given a platform and an opportunity to interact and work collaboratively through the internet by being able to read each other’s responses and increase their knowledge through this and then alter their responses if necessary.  The activity was designed to support this learning theory.

Value of Scaffolding and Learning Outcomes:

The Scaffolding of this task mainly greatly helped me to complete this activity but it also caused me a few confusions.  Having the scaffolding was a great help as you knew exactly what you needed to discuss and where it was going.  The questions meant you knew exactly what you needed to think and write about.  Sometimes the use of the questions confused me slightly as I felt that some of them were similar and I started to write very similar things to another section.  However, because it was well scaffold I could look at the different hats and the questions and properly interpret what was meant by the questions and what the difference between the two was.  By having the discussion broken up into de Bono’s six thinking hats it meant that you could think critically about the issue in a very specific way for each different hat which meant that you were more focused as you only had to think of one aspect of having mobile phones in the classroom instead of having countless mismatched thoughts in your head all at once.  When you have several questions to answer for each hat this made writing forty words impossible, which may not have been good for this activity.  However, it is great for students as it prompts them about more things they need to research and write about.  The structure was an excellent learning tool.

The learning outcomes that were demonstrated through the use of the scaffolding of de Bono’s hats were the ability to critically think about the different aspects of a decision, the different aspects being the Six Thinking Hats.  The scaffolding allowed students to be able to critically think about each one individually.  Being able to ‘put on’ each hat separately allowed the students to focus in on those specific thoughts and considerations.  The structure and the questions mean that students know exactly what they should be doing for the activity, making it a great tool for classroom tasks.  The students also could in a way work collaboratively as they could see the responses of other students and gain new information from this or have it make them rethink their views, or inform them know of another way that they could interpret the question.  The students also learnt how to think critically by doing it and seeing the responses of peers.  They also learnt new information on the topic.  Another learning outcome that the students achieved was how to use a wiki.  The mobile phones wiki was well structured for student learning.

 

References:

Woo, Y., & Reeves, T. C. (2007). Meaningful interaction in web-based learning: A social constructivist               interpretation. The Internet And Higher Education, 10(Special Section of the AERA Education              and World Wide Web Special Interest Group (EdWeb/SIG), 15-25.                                                    doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2006.10.005