The Anonymous Librarian: Creating Classroom Collaborations Via Wikis

In our 21st century world, everything is becoming more and more technological and distance-oriented, for better or for worse. After all, as we are constantly reminded, we live in an increasingly flat world in which information is immediate and overwhelming. Gone are the days in which a six-month-old newspaper was the newest information an American settler could get. Gone are the days in which education was rare and a rudimentary knowledge of the three R's was as much as a student could reasonably hope to achieve before boing to operate a farm or raise a family. In the 21st century, pretty much the only way to have any hope of future reliable employment is to get a good education and to be fluent with technology. One method of technological collaboration that facilitates communication over distances is in wikis, which are online documents that multiple people can view and edit.

For one course assignment this semester, my class has been assigned the task of creating wiki pages to learn more about using 21st century technology. This has been extremely useful because, first of all, the course is operated over large distances. For example, I am at least an hour and twenty minutes away from any of the other classes. This is not necessarily an insurmountable distance, but given that I rarely travel to any of the cities in which my fellow classmates live and learn, I have found that real-time interaction--or, indeed, interaction of any sort--is often difficult because we don't really have a personal relationship. Seeing someone's face on a screen for perhaps 15 seconds at a time while they speak really is not at all conducive to getting to know one's classmates. However, we make do with what we have, and it is still possible to learn and even thrive in such a classroom.

For those assignments which require collaboration, though, spaces such as wikis are profoundly valuable. From past courses, I have found that email is highly inefficient; they take a long time, there can be overlap, and conversations are rather formal and sometimes forced. After all, if you have to communicate everything you can think of that might be relevant at a time, the result might be a 2-page essay in which the tone is likely fairly stiff--after all, we all want to impress our peers, don't we? ;)

Accessible on Flickr.com
"Wiki Collaboration Leads to Happiness" (found on Ron Mader's page)
Originally created by Manny Wilson
https://www.flickr.com/photos/planeta/2374851532

The solution I found in those past classes was on Canvas Collaborations, which was a medium for real-time conversation. In Collaborations (that is, Etherpad), I and my classmate(s) were able to converse as quickly and as fluidly as we could type. Several people could type at once, and it was easy to write and respond to queries and thought. The conversations could also be saved and resumed at any time, which meant that everything was available at any time. I still think that this is an enormously valuable tool, but it can be a bit of a pain to set up since you presumably have to download it onto your computer if your college does not provide free online access to it.

A close cousin to Etherpad is the wiki, which, as I mentioned before, is something that I have been asked to experiment with for a class. From what I have seen so far, a wiki is relatively simple to set up...initially. It can be a bit difficult to make it so that the intended audience can actually access it.

A wiki such as those created by Wikispaces looks a bit like a blog--not as fancy/personalized as this one, but still functional. It can be used for assignments and requires a specific login as well as a Join Code, which is nice because it is specific and secure. This means that teachers (or librarians) can create wikis for assignments and collaborative works, whether these collaborations may be created for professionals or for students. They do not require the members to participate at the same time, either. In fact, it seems as if it is impossible for members to participate at the same time, since edits must be written and then saved. This means that any time that people attempt to work at the same time, there might be a confusing overlap or failure of the editing. They also cannot see one another's' work at the same time.

This is, in fact, one area in which I prefer another wiki-like program which I may have mentioned earlier which may be edited and added to in real time. This is useful because members have the option of holding a real-time, genuine conversation even while they have the option of adding or editing at different times. To be honest, this is a personal preference, but while both wikis and lesser-known technologies have their uses, I prefer technologies such as Etherpad because they allow members to hold more genuine communication.