Report and reflection 8- More Collaborative Tools: Wikis & Concept Mapping

This week we are learning about wikis, which is another collaborative tool. As defined is the K12Learning2.0 resource, a wiki is a website that anyone can edit easily using a regular web browser. A wiki can be as basic as a single page containing information with links by one author, or it could be as complex as Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia which contains over 38 million articles! Wikis can be made for any purpose and can be used to create and share content on the web. Wikis can be edited and worked on by multiple users from anywhere. A few key features of wikis are the revision listing, which stores any user’s information along with page revisions, which allows people to easily track and evaluate the user’s content. Every version of every page is also saved under the wiki’s history, which makes it easier to track and compare versions of a page. Another feature is the wiki’s permissions, which allow the wiki to be set to public, private or protected.

(2015, September 8.) Wikipedia on

 massive drive to increase Tamil content 

[Online Image] Retrieved from http

://www.dnaindia.com/scitech

/report-wikipedia-on-massive-drive-to-

increase-tamil-content-2123004

Wikis are a useful way to improve one’s literacy skills. Wiki contributors can get plenty of practise and experience writing and editing wiki pages. Also, for people using wikis, they can also teach good researching skills by encouraging students to evaluate the validity of the pages. As said by Clark (2012), a wiki is a strongly collaborative medium that forces people to be collaborative. It also teaches you to be collaborative within a set of rules and reflect on the nature of collaboration in terms of the roles of individuals within a process.  In my opinion, wikis can be very useful in finding basic information or a quick history of something, but are not too reliable to use for in depth research. Since the people who edit wikis could be anyone, you must always question the validity or credibility of anything found on wikis. In fact, nearly every class I have been in in university has said to not Wikipedia as a source!

From learning about digital responsibilities and their importance to all sorts of online tools, I have determined what the most important rights are in my opinion. These are the right to privacy, ownership, and freedom of expression. It is important that one’s privacy be respected online, as well as one should always respect others privacy. There is also a responsibility to also give credit to when using someone else's work, which is also very important for wikis. Also, while people should have the right to post whatever they want online, they should still abide by proper digital etiquette.

(2015, October 21.) Trudeau and Stephen Harper meet as transition begins [Online Image] Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-and-stephen-harper-meet-as-transition-begins-1.3282769

Lastly, from my feedly reader this week I read an article titled Canada plans to experiment with giving people unconditional free money. This article talked about the government’s plan to give everyone in Ontario a basic monthy income to cover living expenses such as food, transportation, clothing and various utilities, being implemented later this year. Sheila Regehr stated that "So there's no reason why people and governments in other parts of this country need sit on the sidelines – it's time for us all to get to work." This likely indicates that this idea will spread across Canada. I for one really hope this happens, since it could help me pay off my student debt!

Talk with you next week,

Jordan