Earlier today I was invited by my good friend Maged Kamel Boulos to write a paper on educational mashups for inclusion in a special issue of Future Internet - an online open access journal, which he is guest editing. So I have put together a title and an abstract which I hope fits the bill. The paper is based upon some talks I gave recently at Online Educa Berlin, the Plymouth E-Learning Conference, and the JISC Regional South West Conference. I also had a paper planned for the EDEN Conference in Gdansk, Poland last week, but health issues intervened and I never got to give it. Well, every cloud has a silver lining, so the paper has been repurposed. Here it is, awaiting your comments.
Wiki Blog Space Mashups: Combining Web 2.0 tools to create collaborative and reflective learning spaces
Recently teachers have used wikis, blogs and other open architecture Web tools to encourage student interaction (Richardson, 2006). Wikis can promote collaborative learning, and serve as repositories for user generated content (Wheeler et al, 2008). Blogs can encourage greater reflection on learning and enable students to enter into dialogue on specific topics (Kop, 2007). Wikis form a part of a community space, whilst blogs are situated within an individual’s personal space. Interest is growing about how social software tools can provide added value to the learning process, and this is reflected in the growing literature on the topic. Less is known about how wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 tools might be combined and mashed up to create dynamic new learning environments. In this paper, Web 2.0 tool combination is explored, with reference to two case studies of recent initial teacher training programmes where blogs and wikis were blended to create new virtual learning spaces. Students offer their views about using these tools, and reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of this approach. There is also discussion about aggregation of content and a theorisation of how community and personal spaces can create tension and conflict. A new ‘learning spaces’ model will be presented which aids visualisation of the processes, domains and territories that are brought into play when content and Web 2.0 tools are mashed up within the same space.
References
Kop, R. (2007) Blogs and wikis as disruptive technologies: Is it time for a new pedagogy? In M. Osborne, M. Houston and N. Toman (Eds.) The Pedagogy of Lifelong Learning. Abingdon: Routledge.
Richardson, W. (2006) Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Wheeler, S., Yeomans, P. and Wheeler, D. (2008) The good, the bad and the wiki: Evaluating Student Generated Content as a Collaborative Learning Tool. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39 (6), 987-995.
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