What type of knowledge building activities do you see going on in these different sites?
First, I see wikis as offering an opportunity to collectively and collaboratively work on an assignment that lends both an sense of individual responsibility and achievement as well as a sense of belonging to a community or something larger than what they are. To gain a sense of “what I say matters” and can be acted upon by someone else/impacts someone else is a large lesson to learn. This really hit home with me in the Davis site, The Art of Using Wiki Pages to Teach. Additionally, I also see Wikis as being another tool to lend a voice to the student regardless of their geographical location, level of social interaction, or time zone. The Flat Classroom Project is a really interesting site to explore for it shows in a real and practical way how to connect past the four walls of the classroom. Finally, I see a wiki as becoming a resource of class creation but also as an archival tool for previous wikis created…may be a good example of what to show later classes for how to do a wiki or share information about what the wiki was about.
How do you see the quality of knowledge building being monitored in large public wikis and the smaller wikis?
According to the McCrea discussion in The Journal: Wiki-Centric Learning was the fact that simultaneous editing was hard for large groups and could not accommodate multiple users at once but did recommend GoogleDocs instead. However, with a smaller group, wikis were easy to manage and edit with accommodate simultaneous users.
Miscellaneous thoughts…..
One of the interesting thoughts I read in The Journal: Wiki-Centric Learning was the discussion of wikis vs GoogleDocs. As a result, I look around on the internet and found this interesting wiki about this very topic, Blogs, Wikis, and Google Docs: Which one is right for your lesson?, and a comparative table for types of lessons, Blogs, Wikis, Docs: Which is right for your lesson? A Comparison Table.