Reflection: Mobile Phones Wiki

After experiencing a few very frustrating technical difficulties with the previous wiki’s, I was extremely hesitant to even attempt this one. Still, I persevered. In the end and to my surprise, I actually enjoyed participating in it. By this stage, I actually found myself to be confident and competent in using and contributing to a wiki, which may display aspects of Behaviourism - in learning how to use a wiki I continued to follow the step-by-step instructions, which were repeated each time I contributed to multiple wikis while receiving feedback each time when things went right, or wrong.

The mobile phones wiki was scaffolded by De Bonos hats, a powerful tool used to take views from a number of important perspectives, forcing you to move outside your habitual thinking style, and helping to get a more rounded view of the situation. Considering the topic, mobile phones in the classroom, my immediate reaction was ‘are you crazy?’ without a second consideration of any other viewpoints. Afterwards however, with multiple approaches considered, I developed a more informed approach towards the idea. Therefore, the six thinking hats concept as a scaffold design, I believe, was an immense benefit to learning. Additionally, each participant was able to extend their understanding and opinion from the contributed ideas of others through the form of public wiki. The only issue with this kind of design would be the chance of repetition among contributors, however the notion of a wiki combats this, in that all text can be edited and all individual ideas can be merged into one big idea making this forum reflective of constructivism. It provided the ability to generate new theories individually and then share those ideas with the group. The focus of one perspective at a time to finish with an overall collaborative perspective reflects constructivism while encouraging levels of higher order thinking by justifying a decision through critiquing (ie. evaluating) to generating new ideas or ways of viewing things (creating), both of which are at the top end of Blooms Taxonomy. Evidence of the learning theory cognitivism can also be seen in this wiki design through the shaping of thinking via de bonos thinking hats.

This kind of approach is definitely one that has supported my own learning in positive ways. It encouraged me to look at all sides of an issue before making a judgement. It supports a diverse range of learners as its creative for those visual, kinesthetic and musical kind of smart while still highly critical and analytical for the logical and linguistic. Also, the wiki provides aspects of group work for those of more interpersonal MI.