Wiki for Collaborative Learning

Wiki

Wiki is "a website that contains pages that can be easily created and edited by multiple users"(Kelly, 2010). The several features of Wiki makes it a great tool for Collaborative Learning which is one of the 20 Century Skills. 

Watch is a feature which constantly inform students the changes which made by the other members. The feature eliminates the wasted time to access the page repeatedly to figure out what, if anything, has been changed.(Kelly, 2010)

History feature show editors when and who made the change. It allows users  to revert to a previous version when someone accidentally deletes something on a page. History features encourage students to participate, because the other members and the teacher will be able to see who contributed.(Kelly, 2010)

Wiki in Plain English

(Smart Media Agency, 2012)

How Wiki is Used in Kindergarten?

One example of wiki in kindergarten is Progressive Story which is a project that "4 classes would collaborate virtually to create a story." Students in each classroom added story to their assigned section. "As each subsequent class added their section the story grew and took many interesting twists and turns. " Because of the wiki's feature that allows multiple author to edit at the same time, several kindergarten classroom succeeded in creating a story. The story made by collaborative work  by 4 kindergarten classes is Here (Sheridan, 2012). 

Does Collaboration Occur With The Support of Wiki?

Allsop investigates the visible forms of collaboration when children are learning with Wikis. Based upon the research findings, "it can be suggested that children are collaborative when learning with the support of wikis. Therefore, wikis could be seen as an effective tool to support collaborative learning and knowledge sharing in education and facilitates group learning where students can learn and share knowledge. Various type of behavior associated with collaboration, were observed when the children were helping each other with their tasks" (Allsop, 2011, 136).  

References 

Allsop Yasemin. (2011). Does Collaboration Occur when Children Are Learning with the Support of a Wiki? Retrieved September 30, 2016 from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ946618.pdf.

Kelly Rob. (2010). Using Wikis for Collaborative Learning. Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning. Retrieved September 30, 2016 from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/using-wikis-for-collaborative-learning/

Sheridan Benjamin J.  (2012). Exploring Digital Media in Education. Retrieved September 30, 2016 from http://www.coetail.com/bsheridan/2012/03/22/kindergarten-students-in-indonesia-and-japan-leverage-technology-to-collaboratively-write-story/

Smart Media Agency. (2012). Wikis in Plain English. Retrieved September 30, 2016 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0WQUrX-jBw 

Blogs

The Purpose of Blogging in Kindergarten

Purpose of blogging at kindergarten are to motivate students to learn, to reinforce students' memory by giving opportunities to output their gained knowledge, and sharing information with parents. By blogging,  students publish and display work done in the classroom or at home. "Class activities and assignments acquire relevance and meaning when students realize that their work is going to be seen by a broader audience. " (Maloy, 2016).  Students feel accomplished when they get acceptance, praise, and feedback from others. Also according to the YouTube video bellow, blogging improve students-parents communication. By sharing school work through blog, parents and children have common topic to talk. Parents and children do not need to repeat conversation like "What did you do in school today?" "Nothing!" Parents can ask about the specific school project, and students can talk about what they learned from the work. 

Tillyer Michael. (2012). Retrieved September 30, 2016 from

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB3HjtPVOrg 

As an example of blogging at kindergarten, I will introduce Matt Gomez's blogging at his kindergarten classroom. In his classroom, all children have  individual blogs with KidBlog. His main purpose of the individual blogs is "their growth in writing and vocabulary" (Gomez, 2015). He has each student share their daily journal on the blog once a week, however he does not decide what to share and how they share their information to promote their initiative learning. "They can type a post as is traditional or they can upload a picture of a journal page, record audio, use apps to create video or embed books for various apps and websites" (Gomez, 2015).  He sees the blog beneficial, also because it allows students to blog "any time they are motivated to share their learning." As the above YouTube video warms at the end of the video, there are always drawbacks to consider. I recommend to set rules which are shared among students, parents, teachers, and school. To see example of Matt's blog, please click Here. 

Skype

Skype 

Skype enables to open up children' possibilities through transformative learning with connection with people around the world. 

Mystery Skype

"Fifth grade teacher Scott Bedley uses Skype to connect and engage with other classrooms around the world. By playing Mystery Skype, students learn to use technology and gain a global perspective " (Microsoft, 2015). 

(Mictosoft, 2015)

Interviews Via Skype

Interviewing to Authors

(Skype, 2015)

Interview to Ocean Researcher

(Skype, 2014)

Exposing young children to many occupations rather than only popular occupations such as Fire fighters, Police, and Soccer player, or to different people from different country expands children's future possibilities and their views of seeing things. Textbook also can inform about expert field and different culture, but Skype makes it more authentic and cooler by live video chat with the expert in a specific field and people from different country or palces. 

References 

Skype. (2015). Skype Inspires Literacy. Retrieved September 30, 2016 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E5309zZOB4

Skype. (2014). Skype in the classroom takes students on the ultimate field trip. Retrieved September 30, 2016 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzBf_J0dvyU

Introduction to Social Media

Social Media 

"Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration," which includes Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, Wikipedia, Pinterest, Email, Blogs, and so on.  (Whatls.com)

Teenagers and Young Adults

(Retrieved from Edison Research)

Today, 93% of teens ages (15-17) have mobile access to the internet, and young adults and teenagers (16-24 years old) spend the most time online via mobile, more than any other age group, spending nearly 200 minutes per day on a mobile device. Among 2002 of internet users aged 13 to 24, 72% use Snapchat, 68% use Facebook, and 66% use Instagram (Edison Research, 2016). Many teenagers and young adults spend time for social media.
As you can imagine, your little child will likely be those teenager/young adults who spend 200 minutes/day, 100 hours/month, and 50 days/ year on social media. Thus, I believe that as a parent, you better to teach how to use social media wisely rather than keep the social media away from your kids.

How Social Media Contribute to Education?

According to Transforming Learning with New Technologies, social networking provides connections between teachers and students, promotes meaningful learning, and extends academic learning beyond the regular classroom learning (Maloy, 2016). Moreover, student become more central and active in social media learning. Kathy Cassidy, a primary school teacher in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, uses blogs and Twitter with students in grades one and two and claims benefits of using social media in classroom. 

Using Social Media in the Classroom

Kathy Cassidy. (2013). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riZStaz8Rno

In future posts, I will introduce what kind of social media is combined in the education at kindergarten classrooms today, and how it affects students' learning experiences. 

References

Maloy, R. W. Verock Ruth-Ellen. Edwards. A. E. Woolf. P. B.  (2016). Transforming learning              with new technologies. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon. 

WhatIs.com. (n.d.). What is social media? Retrieved October 01, 2016, from                     http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/social-media