Yacapaca

Over at Wikitextbook, Steve is introducing compulsory registration. The idea is to encourage students to fully participate in the wiki as a group project, by assessing their individual contributions. An interesting aspect is that wiki users tend to spontaneously adopt different roles – creator, editor, provocateur and so forth – and by checking the history of each page, Steve can see exactly who has done what and who has adopted which role.

Steve and I got the idea from Konrad Glogowski, who has done a similar thing using blogs. He quickly found that the real value was the way the students used their blogs to construct public conversations. There are big differences; Konrad is teaching English in Canada; Steve teaches Business Studies in England. Wikis and blogs both count as social software, but they have many differences. So it is a very worthwhile experiment.

I will be watching with keen interest, and, this being a wiki, you can observe directly too. Don’t rush though; we’re having trouble installing the Permissions module into Wikimedia.

So just as we’re putting Wikitextbook into lockdown, along comes Russ Beatie to put a spanner in the works with a well-argued case for actively promoting anonymity in social software. Promoting, mark you, not just permitting.

Russ’s argument is that most bad behaviour online is connected to issues of power. Flame wars, for example, are invariably personal as one person attempts to dominate another. His arguments are impeccable, but in clarifying my understanding they actually reinforce my belief that Steve is doing the right thing with Wikitextbook.

Teaching in a formal education system is about identity and power. Steve’s ability to educate stems mainly from the position of power (authority if you prefer) vested in him by the system. Without the carrot of assessment, students who are not innately driven by a fascination with the subject being taught simply have no incentive to participate.

What we have to be clear about is how different this is from voluntary education, which adults participate in largely for love of the subject and a desire to learn. There, there could be a very strong argument for complete anonymity in an otherwise identical project to Wikitextbook.

My thanks to Andrew Field and his Year 7 ICT class at Neale-Wade for some fascinating classroom observation yesterday. Some issues that came out of the visit, in no particular order:

1. Why are school ICT networks so hard for children to use? At every school I visit, I see some children unable to use some or all of the features they should be using for half the lesson or even more. I suspect many teachers think this problem is unique to their own school, but it’s not. It is damn near universal. I’ve only observed schools with PC networks recently; I wonder if Mac or Linux school networks fare any better?
2. How can we assess children who work in pairs on an online system? Special joint logins? Could quickly get out of hand. For Yacapaca-type products I honestly do not think there is a good solution, but I have some ideas for an online project service that would actively support multiple authors. Look at the History on any popular Wikipedia topic, and you will see all authoring and editing clearly attributed. I’m sure that could be adapted for the classroom.
3. Nice to see Neale Wade running Moodle as their VLE, and saving a fortune in proprietary VLE fees at the same time. Andrew is already getting it integrated with his quiz generating software.
4. Also most cheering to see Yacapaca directly linked from their Moodle installation to facilitate student login.

Fantastic chat with Andrew Field (he of SchoolHistory fame) last night. We’ve been corresponding for ages, but only just now got to speak. I am a huge admirer of SchoolHistory, and it was that more than anything that persuaded me that Yacapaca tests should be delivered in Flash.

Andrew has not used Yacapaca before, so I assigned him a trial account, hoping to get feedback by half term at least. Seems I’d not quite grasped Andrew’s timescale; shortly before midnight two pages of absolutely top notch feedback, including a report from one of Andrew’s colleagues, was in my inbox. Here’s my favourite quote:

…make more of the yacapaca design. When the quiz is loading you get the Chalkface logo and quite a ugly loading bar. As you are using Flash 7 there are a multitude of loading techniques that you could use that would make things more interesting. How about having a massive ’empty’ yacapaca head that appears and then fills up in full colour. Don’t stop there either – how about a red ‘doom-laden’ yacapaca head that fades in just as your time starts to run out?

Andrew doesn’t pull punches and he has made a list of criticisms that need addressing. But his grasp for how students relate to what they find on their screens is so strong that it’s impossible to refute his points.

Which is my way of saying, I guess, that if you want to add anything to my to-do list for this term, you’ve had your chips. Andrew has already filled it up.