Wiki Wiki

Katie Spaulding

Wikis: a collective approach to language production

ANDREAS LUND

ReCALL, v20 n1 p35-54 Jan 2008. 20 pp. (Peer Reviewed Journal)

Hawai’ian for “quick, fast”

•Created in 1995 by Howard Cunningham as a novel way of developing private and public knowledge bases, a net-based, hypertextual and collective authoring tool.

•The design implies that structure is not imposed or pre-determined but emerges as a result of participation. •When wiki activities enter schools there are consequences for learning and teaching

The Study

What kind of interdependent activities do learners engage in and what is the impact of wikis on collaborative work in the foreign language learning classroom?

Wiki activities challenge established language production practices in school

Claim:

Tested on:an EFL classroom in Norway (Senior High School foundation course, age 17).

This study does not:Aspire to make claims as to the possible effects of a wiki on the quality of the language production.

Let’s start by thinking about where our students will be living and working in the future; what are we preparing them for?

A collaborative workenvironment

The Social Turn in SLA

A shift from the individual to the group

Learners participate in different speech communities where they draw on social resources

shift from learning as a process within minds to learning as a process between minds and“how we use language to think together”

Group ZPD

One class participated in a mandatory foundation course in EFL

Measured: Interaction

The Project: “Our USA”

The Pattern which emerged:

First, local content development

and then, the collectively generated network.

Remember, these are Norwegian speakers…

Phase 1Self-contained units,Local ownership

Phase 2Exploring possibilities,Group ZPD

Student Likes:

•I like this because we so easily can compare and share information on what we know and what we do not know about the American way of living

•I like this because it is a win/win situation. To help others and get help back is nice. Co-operating is very important in our daily lives and our future jobs! •It doesn’t matter if it is yours or others. This way it is possible for people to argueand discuss •The subject will be shown from many persons view and not from one singularperson [...] I feel like part of a team.

Student Dislikes:

•Someone can change what you have written, even when you know that what you have written is correct•My texts got deleted.

What students constructed together with classmates cannot be reduced to the sum of discrete individual contributions only; the dynamically evolving wiki rests on the relations between participants as enacted in a collective ZPD.

Wiki Problems:

•the emergence of objects that cannot be recognized as the work of an individual and that are always in flux.• Task construction and assessment that address collective practices

Remember:it is the activity and not the technology that makes the difference!

The wiki not only documents the product of these processes but also documents the process itself, even over long timescales, as each version of a page is saved, adding up to the full history of its development.

So you know who’s doing what.

All you need to do is to choose a cultural research project that they will want to work on.These students researched American soaps and Forest Gump.

Idea: research how well American movies are received in target language countries…Twilight anyone?