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I’ve been asked how wikis in Moodle relate to the read-write matrix I published recently. There is significant correlation, because the standard wiki module installed with Moodle offers various settings to control who has read access and who has write access.

When creating a new wiki, it’s best to check out the help file for the wiki type setting. This is a screenshot of the help file, with labels added for reference. The matrix of 3 rows and 3 columns provides 9 options for who can read and who can write to the wiki.

I’m not concerned here with the first row (options 1 to 3) since these are teacher wikis and cannot be edited by learners. Types 1 to 3 are useful for teachers to publish materials they don’t want learners to be able to edit: eg administrative information or course details.

The types I find most useful for read-write learning are types 4 (for a fully collaborative class wiki) and type 9. But a class incorporating small group activities might use other types such as 5 and 6.

I’ve mapped some of these Moodle wiki types against the read-write matrix below:

While the Moodle wiki has quite a few limitations, the ability to control access and the ways that learners can collaborate can be very useful. But my advice is to plan the teaching and learning strategies carefully before setting up a wiki in Moodle – once the wiki is in use it’s not always easy to change the type!

Encyclopedia Britannica is providing free access for web publishers, including blog authors, to its online articles. I took advantage of the offer and signed up, thinking to explore how it might provide useful content to include in my writing. Some impressions:

Britannica vs Wikipedia

Britannica has a much more multimedia feel to it than Wikipedia, with things like auto-zooming thumbnails where Wikipedia just has images. But I had a few problems with Britannica’s interface in Firefox such as scroll bars wandering around. Overall, I much prefer the Wikipedia approach, only as high-tech as it needs to be.

Britannica has a Store section which offers you the chance to buy things like a cd-rom on the topic being currently viewed. I don’t miss that on Wikipedia.

Britannica has more in-depth articles on some topics, especially those with some historical background. For example, searching for ‘programmed instruction’ took me to an in-depth article on the topic with lots of links to other articles. The same article in Wikipedia was very short and lacked depth and breadth.

Wikipedia has articles on recently emerging or localised topics and concepts where Britannica often has nothing. For example, searching for learning design in Britannica yielded nothing, in Wikipedia it redirected to instructional design. Searching for flexible learning (a term popular here in Australasia) yielded nothing in Britannica but a short article in Wikipedia with links to related concepts.

In summary, I’d have to say that Britannica provided more substantial content for some concepts which I’d characterise as ‘historical’ and ‘mainstream’. Wikipedia provided more substantial content for concepts I’d characterise as ‘emerging’ and less mainstream. However, these are only initial impressions and are not based on a rigorous evaluation of the relative validity of the information provided.

As expected, Britannica and Wikipedia provided complementary information, which in itself is useful. Each had gaps and each had strengths. If Britannica makes its online version free to all (as some have predicted), it may be too late to compete with Wikipedia’s mass appeal but should allow it to retain a niche in the market.

A few years ago, Scott Leslie published his matrix of some uses of blogs in education, which provides a very useful analysis of potential applications for teachers and learners.

For my professional development workshops, I wanted something similar but which was focused solely on learning applications. In addition, I wanted to reflect some of the additional options that learning management systems such as Moodle and Blackboard provide. In particular, wikis and blogs within an LMS tend to provide greater granularity and control of who can access learner-created documents.

To reflect these needs, I’ve developed the read-write matrix of web 2.0 tools for learning which maps various uses of blogs and wikis onto a similar two-dimensional matrix to Leslie’s. The matrix is intended to apply also to other Web 2.0 tools for writing, such as Google Docs.

The purpose of the read-write matrix

I’m hoping the matrix will be helpful to teachers in planning the educational use of Web 2.0 tools. Careful planning is needed because:

• While blogs and wikis within learning management systems typically are less sophisticated functionally than stand-alone software tools, they provide more complex options for controlling who reads and who writes.
• For varying combinations of read and write access, there are both risks and opportunities for learners and effective learning. It’s important to consider these and how they will be best managed.

Presentation: the read-write matrix

The presentation should be reasonably self-explanatory, or you may prefer to read about the matrix first.

I’ve recently been looking for a simple way to manage a list of my current projects and then provide a feed onto my blog. This would then let me keep an eye on where projects are up to, but also let me publish a list of my professional activities and let others know about the sorts of projects I’m involved with.

I tried Twitter but soon found it not ideally suited – it’s not easy to manage and edit Twitter posts, plus the whole social aspect got in the way somewhat! I really wanted something which would let me:

• categorise and organise lists
• change my mind and re-organise items
• publish an RSS feed of list items

Undone

Now I’ve rediscovered Undone, a free online productivity tool which lets you manage your ‘to do’ lists and the bigger projects that they belong to.The great thing is that the author has now added widgets so I can publish my lists to my website. And the widget code relies on HTML, so should work in places where Javascript is not allowed. For example, here’s my Undone widget:

This widget shows up to 8 of the most recent items, and clicking on any item links to my Undone project page. There’s no way as yet to style the widget output using css, but that’s okay for me – the default output seems clean, clear and readable.

A tool for learners?

Undone provides a simple, work-focused tool for managing projects and actions. I can’t help feeling that’s something most learning management systems (LMS) lack, and something which could be a useful part of any personal learning environment (PLE). So I’m interested in a bit more investigation into how a tool like Undone could support learning. Maybe that’s something I need to add to my own to-do list…

I’m a fan of using wikis as a tool for collaborative learning – in my context, I’ve used it as a professional development activity for tertiary educators. I’ve briefly outlined some of the benefits I’ve perceived in an earlier post: Read-write learning in professional development

In an recent Educause conference paper entitled Within the Wiki: Best Practices for Educators, Barbara Schroeder describes 10 ‘instructional strategies for successful learning with wikis.’ This is a really useful list of guidelines for teachers planning to incorporate the use of wikis into courses.

The teacher’s role

One of Schroeder’s guidelines is ‘define and identify roles for collaborative activities.’ From my own experience, I’d add that it’s important to be clear about your own role as teacher/facilitator. For example, what will you do when a student contributes information which you can see is clearly wrong or misinformed? You could:

• Ignore it
• Correct it
• Point out privately or publicly that it’s incorrect
• Hope that another student corrects it
• Give someone the role of responding

Each of these has advantages and drawbacks!

The truly collaborative wiki has the potential to change the power balance between teachers and learners and their respective roles: no longer is the teacher the sole source of authoritative knowledge. On the other hand, ‘wrong’ information can be detrimental and even dangerous, in vocational or academic education. It’s important to be clear about your own role in relation to the shared knowledge and communicate this to learners beforehand.

Photo: wiki pegboard by Luigi Chiesa.