Wednesday, September 16, 2020
Central Kansas Chapter - Morphing to a Web 2.0 World
Hello, friends and cohorts in the new world order of Web 2.0!
Don't you just love those little epiphanies?
Who among us hasn't been frustrated searching for information in an email? I've spent unnecessary amounts of time searching for information in emails that I sent!
Maddening.
After I discerned last week that wikis are like digital dry-erase boards (upon further reflection, they could also be seen to double as announcement boards), I called the president of my chapter (the organizational umbrella over the chorus) and asked him if I could present a proposal to the board that the chapter move to using a wiki instead of email communication. More on that later. You're here to see my plan!
(1) Initiating the "Central Kansas Chapter Hub" Wiki
(2) Target audience - My chorus members
(3) Learning/Training objectives - West & West (2009) advise using Bloom-Taxonomy-type words. (Bloom, 1956; Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)
A. Posting Text:
After successfully logging in, the chorus members will compose a question on either the "FAQ", "questions for the board", or "questions for the musical director" tab.
B.Editing Text from others. The chorus members will critique errors on an error-filled draft (West & West, 2009) by changing the text from errors made by the director intentionally and posting to the "edits made" tab what they did.
C.The chorus members will post a hyperlink to something they dig on the chapter wiki page. Note: members will be invited to post a time-specific youtube link and/or a zoom meeting link.
D. Posting image, Week 1. The chorus members will post a picture of a map to their church to the chapter wiki page.
E. Posting image, Week 2. The chorus members will post sheet music sample of a tag to the chapter wiki page. Note: could include partial screen shot, downloaded image, etc. This will take some instruction.
F. The chorus members will demonstrate ability to see past editions of the page, scroll through the tabs
G. The chorus members will copy & paste something of interest to them from the wiki into an email, social media timeline, or social media message.
H. The chorus members will insert a video of a barbershop/general a cappella song they love to the chapter wiki page.
(4) Rationale for the use of wiki;
A. Advantages over email. - so. much. time. saved.
No searching for contacts. No finding old emails to reattach documents. With some guidance to members, current news will always be on top. Simple "CTRL + F" lets you find what you're looking for.
B. Advantages over corporatized social media.
Far more freedom for members. Everyone in chapter can get to the info even without being a member of FB, Twitter, etc. No inconvenient ads.
C. Controls for disadvantages. West & West (2009) remind us that wikis don't have to be out-of-control spaces. If we set it to where only people with login credentials can view and/or edit the page, we will have relatively the same amount of security as email.
(5) Details on how wiki is used;
I see the prospect of a chapter wiki site as nearly limitless to what it can do for us. Many choruses use sophisticated software like Groupanizer. Many sub-organizations have long chains of emails, like extreme quartetting rallies, when we are coordinating our events.
I intend to use our chapter wiki for the following purposes: upcoming gig logistics - song list, attire, time to report, etc.; important announcements; meeting agendas; business meeting minutes. We could have a private wiki page and a public wiki page that functions as our chorus website.
(6) Suggested wiki-related learning activities/practices/schedules;
Do the collective-encyclopedia thing (West & West, 2009). Invite members to post their tips that they've learned over the years.
(7) Wiki Activity Evaluation (rubric, grading criteria, etc.).
After each week, musical director (that's me!) will send out an email complimenting all of the attempts made. The goal is motivation and transitioning to an easier system, not really giving grades.
Something pretty personally revolutionary happened for me with this post.
In the aforementioned call, I gave the president a general summary of the potential advantages that using a wiki would have for us. He was very polite, and sounded interested to hear my proposal. His openness excited me even further, and, you guys, I wrote the rough draft for this post days ago. Yes, I've added sources and more details, but hey. Turns out I can use my editorial tendencies to still find ways to be creative even if I feel like I might be painting myself into a corner by starting a post before doing the readings. Turns out, it's possible to harmoniously rough-draft (verb) and then read the content to make it better.
Who knew??
Thanks for reading!
~Michael
(8) References
Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman.
Bloom, B. S. (Ed.). (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educa- tion goals: Handbook I, cognitive domain. New York, Toronto: Longmans, Green.
West, J. & West, M. (2009). Using Wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write
web. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass
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Hi Michael!
ReplyDeleteI hypothesized that you were going to tie this to choir so I was interested to see how. First off, I'm actually extremely surprised to hear that your proposal was as accepted and welcoming as it was. It is no surprise that people (especially older, and therefore set in their ways) like to resist change. Or maybe it was my fault to assume that the president of your chapter is a person who is old and set in their ways.
I think it is interesting for two reasons. First, a wiki in this case is considered "new technology". Not new in the sense of "it just hit the shelves yesterday" but new in the sense of it hasn't been used before in your particular case for the situation you laid out. Secondly, and more shocking to me, is that you are not only introducing something new, but you are REPLACING email. Now, I could not agree more about what you said about email! Lord knows it takes me forever to search through the thousands of files that I have convinced myself I was going to need one day. However, email has been around for a long time now (relatively speaking) and it is tried and true. Again, resistance to new things aren't a novel idea but Howard (2013) adds a good point to rationalizing resistance by discussing the RISK that people feel by trying new things. It would have been really easy for your group/president to see that as a risk, and an unnecessary one at that. After all, like Jurassic Park taught us, just because you CAN do something does not mean that you SHOULD do something.
But it looks like you made it past that point and I think that is awesome in its own right. Further, I agree that you will all see benefits from it that email doesn't quite offer (once people get past the learning curve). Big kudos to you my friend! Sorry for the long response but I enjoyed reading your post!
Howard, S. K. (2013). Risk-aversion: Understanding teachers’ resistance to technology integration. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 22(3), 357-372.
Thanks, as always, for your comments, Kiefer! :)
ReplyDeleteI'm really looking forward to giving my pitch. I was just talking to one of my chorus members and telling him about the possibility, and he agrees with me that e-mail can be so clunky. So, I feel like the odds of us switching to wiki for general communication are pretty high!
The other aspect of it is how important collaborative learning is. If I may, remember the meme I posted at the top of last week's entry? Well, the thing is, barbershop harmony culture depends on improvement and learning. That high-road transfer (Perkins & Salomon, 1989) from "we lean on each other to sing" to "we can lean on each other to communicate collectively" makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. Many barbershoppers are, in some ways, the athletes of the choral world - we tend to meet year round, we expect to be coached, many of us compete, we enjoy our craft outside of rehearsal, we have a collective mentality, we relish togetherness and fellowship... I think you'd like our world, tbh. ;) *hint, hint*
Reference:
Perkins, D. N., & Salomon, G. (1989). Rocky roads to transfer: Rethinking mechanisms of a neglected phenomenon. Educational Psychologist, 24(2), 113–142.
Wiki's capabilities of fostering knowledge construction and contextual application can definitely serve the need here. Many organizations like the collaborative aspect of wiki because their employees/staff members can get more involvement but there are organizations/leaders who don't like it. Unless non-wiki related factors get in the way as Kiefer said, this tech integration should be a good one.
ReplyDeleteThat said, all technologies exist for a reason. Email has bee around for long enough that wiki won't be able to replace it. For many people, email is so convenient that this "convenience" feature will kill all new communication tech integrations. So, from what I see, email and wiki will co-exist for a long time. They will be used by different people/generations for different purposes and needs.
Kang
Michael,
ReplyDeleteI've enjoyed reading your post with the creativity aspect you bring to bear with each assignment. This one in particular is very useful in the aspect of collaborating with a large audience and not worrying about trying to find a particular person in a contact list. I believe your ideas of incorporating everyone's ideas is an important aspect to get "buy in" from the group. Reading your post I thought of Kotter's change model and getting the vision to everyone (wiki), and creating an alliance in which you attempted in sending out the proposal. I think if you incorporate some of the ideas of his model in your proposal your use of Wiki and 2.0 web technology is the step forward with the approach your taking. I agree, email is a necessary evil for the privacy standpoint in which somethings not everyone in the reading Wiki needs to read. Great post and really appreciated reading it!
The one thing stood up to me is that you are putting yourself out there, and by sharing with your boss your ideas, you are giving purpose to your learning, which is part of getting engage in learning finding meaning. West & West (2009) argues that students can engage with real people and real problems in a dynamic and evolving workspace in the digital commons. Then adding that Tapscott & Williams asserts (2006, p. 20) that wikis are "changing how companies and societies harness knowledge and capability to innovate and create value."
ReplyDeleteI agree with the comments e-mail is a habit and will be challenging to break. However, I think there is a time, place for everything, and a use for everything. And your lesson is one use that can ditch the e-mail and make communication easier and timeless. I prefer to have a wiki to collaborate, such as sheets on google to plan and schedule my session with students in harmony with teachers' schedules. If any updates on the program I do not know unless I keep coming back to the sheet a difference to the e-mail, I get on my outlook as soon as the teacher or other staff sends it and updates me on any schedule changes. Hence as Dr. Kang notes, the wiki has harmony with e-mails.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteI read your concept for use of a wiki with great interest as your application is clearly unique in a number of ways. Your intended use of a wiki to solve a number of challenges confronting your chorus group is the most intriguing, and shows a clear degree of creativity and innovation. While there appear to be many moving parts to your "lesson" plan and structure, central is the use of a wiki as a collaborative work space for your students. By using the wiki for this purpose, you may not have the same frustrations you currently have with email. I will note however, that continuing to use email for announcements and selective info sharing may support your over all efforts and achievement of the lesson's learning outcomes. very interesting and exciting use of a wiki.
Thanks for sharing your post. I really liked how detailed it was and how well you explained the rational behind everything you did. I completely agree that using a wiki is so much better than conventional email. It is too easy to lose documents, coordination is really lacking, and communication in general suffers. In addition, I like that you set goals for your chorus members so that started with something easy like posting a text all the way to inserting media, images and videos, into the wiki page. As West and West (2009) point out, a successful group project must have clear goals established and communicated clearly (p.28). I really feel that you accomplished this with your lesson plan. Great job.
ReplyDeleteWest, J. A., & West, M. L. (2009). Using Wikis for Online Collaboration: The Power of the Read-Write Web (1st ed.). Jossey-Bass. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787415589530