Reflection on Wiki Activity

Learning in the 21st Century: Wiki Activity

Yesterday , Kingsley Caldwell and I took part in a wiki activity which required us to view two YouTube clips and summarise the positive, negative and interesting points of these clips in a PMI chart. There were different components to this task and today I wish to discuss three of these components.

Firstly the use of YouTube; an online system of sharing video clips with any one on the Internet or a select group of Internet users. Many people are aware of YouTube, its purpose and how to navigate it at a basic level. But today I wish to contemplate how YouTube can be used as an effective learning tool.

In a classroom setting YouTube can provide near immediate access to stimulus relevent to curriculum based subjects; for example when teaching students about cyclones the footage of a cyclone can be quickly retrieved from the Internet through YouTube. This clip can be shown to the class as a whole and possibly dissected collaboratively by this class. It also can be viewed by individuals in their own time (given they all have access to computers and Internet) enabling them to re-watch critical points, pause the video to take notes or fast forward through irrelevant parts of the clip. Furthermore, clips available publicly can be viewed at leisure outside of the classroom as homework or revision. YouTube provides students with the opportunity to engage visually and audibly. There are negatives, of course, to YouTube including the impracticality of ensuring all clips are "child friendly", the massive amount of available clips means that finding relative footage can be tedious and YouTube clips alone fail to give students a chance for interaction. Hopefully I will discuss YouTube further at a later date, for now I wish to move on to working collaboratively.

For this task it was advised that students form pairs to create the PMI chart. Kingsley and I worked together on this after collaboratively viewing the required YouTube clips and this was of benefit to the both of us. The opportunity to share ideas and to discuss 21st Century Learning meant that we got to consider more aspects than we would have if we'd been working alone. We have had very different life experiences and therefore our viewpoints on issues also differ. It was interesting and beneficial to consider his opinions on past, present and future education after viewing the clips and not just my own points of view. I believe that together we constructed a PMI chart that was of higher quality than what I could have produced on my own.

Lastly, I would like to reflect on the process of editing a wiki page. This was a new experience for us both. We were the first of the Gladstone cohort to edit our PMI chart onto the page and being the first it was very daunting having nothing to compare our work to - I'm the type of learner who likes to see a clear example of the completed task that I've been asked to do. It will be interesting to view others PMI charts and gauge whether this quick graphic organiser of information provides the same quality of learning experience as watching YouTube clips, reflecting on them and summarising important points into positives, negatives and interesting perspectives did. Either way I very much look forward to viewing others PMI charts along with their reflective blog entries!