To follow from my last post on teaching vs. training I'll take a minute to evaluate the role of technology in the classroom. We used a wiki to create the document on teaching and training, a method with some benefits and some drawbacks.
Since we worked remotely, the four of us used the discussion board part of our wiki to talk about what content we wanted to include. This was somewhat effective in getting our information out there to the others but was not instant and so we sometimes had misunderstandings where people did not see other's replies. It got a little confusing at times!
The way we could edit the document was great since we could edit fonts, colors and backgrounds to make it look exactly how we wanted. However, unlike another format like Google Docs, only one person could save edits at a time and so we accidentally ended up with some miscommunication and some information deleted.
Overall I can see wiki documents being of value to my classroom but I would most likely not use it remotely for groups of more than two students due to the ease of miscommunication. For example, Kristine and I used our Broncomail chat, which is instant, to communicate when we should go in to edit the document a year to alleviate the non-instant nature of the discussion board. If there were just two people it could be easier to bypass these issues.
Another alternative I think could work for larger groups remotely would be google docs. Although it cannot be edited to be as "pretty" as the wiki, it can have multiple editors at any given time and has an instant chat feature to aid effective communication.
Good for you and Kristine to think of instant chat. You are right that the wiki is missing a much needed way to metacommunicate. But gosh it looks so pretty when you are done :).
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