Simpozion InternaŃional "Challenges and Opportunities of the New Information and Communication Technologies for Education” (May 14, 2011)

„Our broad experience with attempts at collaboratory projects has revealed that not all communities are ready for collaboratory technologies. There are two dimensions to this: collaboration readiness and collaboration technology readiness.” (Stephen Koslow, Michael Huerta, 2007)

Wikispaces: Learning and Collaboration Opportunities (Wkkispaces: oportunităŃi de învăŃare şi colaborare) Profesor Florica Paragină, România, Casa Corpului Didactic a Municipiului Bucureşti, Bucureşti Profesor Silviu Paragină, România, Colegiul NaŃional “Cantemir Vodă”, Bucureşti

Abstract – In Romania, SIVECO S.A. promotes the utilization of the Wikispaces Web site developer. This paper offers a personal analyze of a new collaborative tool developed for the teachers: a Wiki Web site. Basically, this wiki is a personal Web site with edit buttons, which may be developed by any teacher from K-12 education. The Wikispaces site offers to the teachers the chance to create their own educational site, for a better collaboration between teachers and their students. The teachers can interact better with their students, using this e-Learning tool, because they have some special rights in the Wiki’s administration, such as: setting permission for the whole Wiki, managing wiki members, changing the look and feel of the site, creating, inserting, renaming or deleting files and pages, locking pages for being edited by other persons. The students are feeling better when they are able to discuss with their teachers using an Internet communication tool. Rezumat În România, SIVECO SA promovează utilizarea site-ului Wikispaces Web Developer. Această lucrare oferă o analiză personală a unui nou instrument de colaborare dezvoltat pentru profesori: site-ul Wiki Web. Practic, acest wiki este un Web personal cu butoane de editare, care poate fi dezvoltat de către orice profesor din învăŃământul preuniversitar. Wikispaces oferă profesorilor şansa de a crea propriile lor pagini Web dedicate învăŃământului, pentru o mai bună colaborare între cadrele didactice şi elevii lor. Profesorii pot interacŃiona mai bine cu elevii lor, folosind acest instrument e-Learning, pentru că ei au unele drepturi speciale în administrarea Wiki, cum ar fi: accesul la setările pentru întreaga pagină Wiki, gestionarea membrilor wiki, schimbarea aspectul site-ului, crearea, inserarea, redenumirea sau ştergerea fişierelor şi a paginilor, blocarea unor pagini pentru editarea de către alte persoane. Elevii se simt mai bine atunci când sunt în măsură să discute cu profesorii lor utilizând un instrument de comunicare pe Internet. Introduction

The students' interest increase for the school activities when they use computers, software and information sources provided by the Internet. In such cases, the feelings of pride and satisfaction that arise, are positive learning experience. "The learning experiences can be positive or negative, the teacher's role is to ensure / facilitate positive experiences." Experimenting

Simpozion InternaŃional "Challenges and Opportunities of the New Information and Communication Technologies for Education” (May 14, 2011)

situations is a more effective way of learning than receiving the information or their application in artificial settings (Şoitu, L. 2006). (Şoitu, L., 2006) A person, adult or child gets in to keep in long-term memory (learning), the knowledge or the skills acquired through positive experiences, which meets their needs. For this reason, most often the learning experience is more important than its content and then the learning must be centred on the student (the learner). The results obtained by Predescu (Şoitu, L., 2006, pg.153) comparative analysis of student-centred learning strategies (mediated learning, active learning, case simulation, collaborative learning and learning experienced), are presented in the Table 1 . Nr. crt.

Type of Mediated learning learning learning Option strategic

Active Learning

Simulation cases

Collaborative Learning

Experiential learning

1.

Appropriate level of student knowledge The key skills obtained

Very High

High

Medium

Low

Very Low

Metacogni -tive

Cognitive Social

Social Cognitive

Social SelfCognitive knowledge Self-knowledge Social Cognitive Equally Intern (student) distributed

2.

3.

Location External External External for the activity (teacher) (teacher) (teacher) control 4. Focus activity Skills Skills Skills Educational Personal Training Training Training Experience experience 5. Nondirective The character of Directive Directed Coordina- Negotiated the activity ted Table 1. Summary table of policy options in the design and implementation of studentcentred activities, proposed by Predescu. (Şoitu, L., 2006, p. 154) If we look at Table 1, we observe that the experiential and collaborative learning are those that appeal to personal experience, educational learning of the subject: the student. The Collaborative learning is also called cooperative learning and its teaching strategy is based on teamwork, employing the cognitive student learning to perform tasks given to the working groups of two or more students, or teacher-student group. (Şoitu, L., 2006) When someone adopting this strategy, it is better to select topics and activities that enable multiple perspectives, different interpretations based on previous experience so that students develop skills of: teamwork, information seeking, organizing, planning and monitoring. Experiential learning is a teaching strategy based on the idea that maximum profit is obtained by the experimentation of the learning situations, and the transfer of knowledge thus obtained lead to new learning situations (Şoitu, L., 2006) enabling the development of the skills, such as: the selfcritical , critical thinking, organization, planning and monitoring. In order to describe, this learning, the most widely used model (artificial formalization) is that of Kolb's called: experiential learning cycle (CIE) (Figure 1). This strategy comprises four stages, namely: • experiential stage – a specific, active stage, in which the student is the subject of a learning experience;

Simpozion InternaŃional "Challenges and Opportunities of the New Information and Communication Technologies for Education” (May 14, 2011)

• the reflective stage – the summary stage, the student observes the consequences of his action, he examines the learning experience; • the conclusive stage is a step in the conceptualization of the experience, based on the observationof the common elements with other similar experiences; • planning stage - is an active step, for planning and experimentation of the new learning experiences that contribute to the knowledge transfer. Student-centered learning strategies are time consuming for students whose skills of teamwork, information seeking, organization, critical thinking, planning and monitoring are not developed.

The transfer of learning 4. Planning Applying new knowledge to conduct further experiments.

1. Experimentation Individual and group activities

3. Conclusions

2. Recap

Using models and theories they draw conclusions from past and present experiences.

We encourage students to reflect, describe, communicate and learn from experience.

Figure 1: The experiential learning cycle, adapted from Kolb (Şoitu, L., 2006, p. 165)

The utilization of a Wiki Web site developed by the teacher can help students develop these skills because there is no time limit imposed by school schedules, and each group can work her own pace. Wikispaces and Wiki Web Oxford dictionary defines a Wiki as a website or database developed collaboratively by a community of users, allowing each user to add and modify its contents (oxforddictionaries.com). A Wiki is a Web application that allows users to add content and maintain their own successive versions, as well as an Internet forum, but, also, allows to other register persons to modify the content. Wikis are part of the recently appointed Web 2.0 phenomenon, which has become widespread since 2000. The term denotes Wiki and collaborative software used to create such a Web site (http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki). Wiki software is a server application that can be run in a Wiki-like system developed to allow you to create and develop a Wiki web page using a normal Web browser. The page content is saved as a file system and its amendments are contained in a database system for organizing networking type (relational database management system). Also, this type of relief is adopted for the online encyclopedia: Wikipedia. Offering free or for a fee a Wiki Web, there are many sites, where you can develop pages and websites wikis, and among of them is Wikispaces. In Romania, SIVECO Romania S.A. promotes the use of the Wikispaces website, in training programs for teachers, developed in collaboration

Simpozion InternaŃional "Challenges and Opportunities of the New Information and Communication Technologies for Education” (May 14, 2011)

with Intel Teach in order to increase collaboration between teachers and their students. In order to use in teaching projects method, this teachers and pupils training program is implemented in over 50 countries around the world. The supplier SIVECO Romania SA, was selected because it was able to develop AeL – a system for teaching/learning and content management. A teacher can design his own Wiki Web, relatively simple, using the opportunities on Wikispaces, such as: • naming the Wiki Web; • selecting the format of exposure information (templates) both in terms of positioning and selecting colors for texts and images; • to insert multiple pages in the same Wiki Web; • insertion of hyperlinks to other sites from the World Wide Web (WWW); • insertion of questionnaires created with various applications; • insertion of files in specific programs formats as: Word, Power Point, Acrobat Reader, Notepad, etc. • sending invitations to others to become the new Wiki Web users; • restricting access to Wiki Web system with user login and password to Wikispaces and the new Wiki Web, also; • a user can have access to several sites web page links using his/her own password; • invited new users (students, other employees) can have access to edit the information as presented or without this law; • accessing the database with the changes of the Wiki Web site format and materials and recovery of a previous version; • identification of the changes made by each user; • rapid communication between worldwide users. Problems can arise in using a Wiki Web generated using Wikispaces, they are due to: • delayed answer from the wiki’s provider • lack of experience in using a Wiki Web, both for the teacher and pupils; • tendency of some students to not be engaged in a collaborative relationship on the Internet with some of their teachers: either from an underestimation of oneself or the teacher or the fear of failure or the difficulties of accessing the Internet outside the school unit or from an overestimation of their skills or lack the desire to learn beyond the requirements of the program conducted in schools; • lack of the free time moments in their schedule program for the students who want to learn more intense, only for taking part in school competitions, held for study objects considered to be useful for their future job; • resistance to the change of their educational approach style both for teachers and directors of schools or from the students and their parents; • the students refusal (supported by their parents), to learn more than the minimum necessary (for obtaining the note 5), under subject motivation that their curriculla is loaded with concepts, whose utility they does not want to see (which determines the existence of gaps in the student ‘s knowledge, to what ought to know as the curriculum showed. Conclusions The utilization of a Wiki Web offers new channels of communication in relation to the teacher - student pathways that can be used both in real time and asynchronously. A well-designed Wiki Web creates the conditions needed to improve: • the teamwork skills of students;

Simpozion InternaŃional "Challenges and Opportunities of the New Information and Communication Technologies for Education” (May 14, 2011)

• the students' metacognitive skills, manage their own mental activities, by developing their own strategies and processes specific to planning, control / monitoring and regulating their own learning.

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