Mobile Phone Wiki Reflection

Hello fellow E-Learners. This week we participated in the wiki titled Mobile Phones; we did this by using the concept of De Bono’s six thinking hats. I thoroughly enjoyed using this concept to voice my opinion on the idea of using mobile phones in the classroom. The thing that I liked most about participating in this wiki was that I felt more comfortable with letting others know my thoughts on the subject were. As we are only in our second week of this course I still don’t feel completely comfortable with all the answers that I give, and the last thing that I want to do is say something that my fellow peers would laugh at. 

I believe that all 4 learning theories were used in this e-learning activity even if only used in a small way. The reason why I think this is that I personally participated in each learning theory. Behaviourism was used the least, my behaviour and thoughts/feelings towards the task were important. My brain scanned the wiki and sorted out what was important to me and what was not, meaning that I was using the learning theory of cognitivism. I then started looking at what ideas my peers had so that I could see if I was thinking along the same lines as them or if I had ideas that built onto what was already there. This was learning via constructivism. Last but not least is connectivism. I believe this was used the most as this activity was done at my computer with me using various e-learning tools to help me complete the challenge. I needed to brush up on my knowledge of De Bono so I watched a small Youtube clip to help me remember what each hat stood for. 

The biggest benefit for me with participating in this wiki was getting to know what some of my peers think. I am someone who is reserved and that is why I like sitting behind my computer screen and giving my opinion via a wiki or a blog instead of sitting in a room full of people and being called upon. I would use this e-learning idea for my students in the future as it shows many possibilities for various activities. It could be done in groups, pairs, individually, reflecting on what was in the wiki and even finding errors for a literacy lesson (grammatical and spelling, this idea mainly for younger students). The only thing that I can see that could have been and issue with this particular wiki is that not all of the students in this course may be computer ‘savy’. Some students may have had problems setting up their wiki to log in or even knowing how to edit and change font/colour etc. This being the only issue that could have happend makes participating in a wiki a great idea.

I think the set up of this wiki made it so much easier to navigate. With the groups being split into three it meant that the ideas were not scattered all over the place because the ‘student traffic’ was minimal. The overall view of it made it very easy to learn and I know this is a big thing when teaching young students, everything must have a place on the screen instead of being placed anywhere. This wiki had that, it was well set up and I am glad that I could participate. 

Talk to you all in my next blog : )