Wiki vs. Ning

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Permalink Reply by CIndyLane on March 5, 2008 at 11:51am

Perhaps the teachers need a little more help understanding how a wiki works...and I hope that is a WHITE SOX Jersey you're wearing!! Go SOX!

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Permalink Reply by Phil Collins on March 5, 2008 at 11:59am

Yes it is a Sox jersey and even though it is hard to see, I'm wearing a World Series ring in the picture! I had a chance to try one on when I was at Soxfest last year.

The challenge I have with building their understanding of the wiki is that people from all over the state are using it and my opportunity to teach them about it is almost nonexistent.

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Permalink Reply by CIndyLane on March 5, 2008 at 1:06pm

Ok, Phil...you got my attention...love your name (I'm sure you've heard that before) and I am a major sox fan too...now, how about putting together an email with a commoncraft video showing a wiki and maybe making a pdf on how to add to a wiki and throw a fun test wiki out there...Like, "everyone has won a trip to Europe with me, we leave for three weeks in June. Make a page for --what should we take, what should we wear, where should we go....and the person who makes the most edits wins something goofy...like an hawaiian shirt you picked up at GOODWILLL ( Hey, they don't have to know where it came from)

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Permalink Reply by Lee on March 7, 2008 at 7:39am

I think it's important to understand the rationale for having the discussion (not to imply that it's not worth having, but more to determine what's the desired result). Do you simply want to have an open-discussion on topic, or do you want some kind of action to come about because of the discussion taking place?

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Permalink Reply by Phil Collins on March 7, 2008 at 11:05am

It is simply discussion around a topic. There isn't any action that we are trying to cause. The original concept was to have a place where people from across Illinois or the Midwest could discuss how they are using the NWEA assessments and learn from each other.

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Permalink Reply by Lee on March 7, 2008 at 2:20pm

I see...a way to share tactics amongst teachers revolving around a singular topic--NWEA assessments.

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Permalink Reply by meri walker on March 9, 2008 at 9:13pm

Phil, I don't know what NWEA is. Assuming it's some kind of competency/achievement testing... But what I'd like to offer from my own experience is that nings seem to be very useful for building community and getting people to INQUIRE together, to dialogue about things they're at various stages of learning. Wiki's on the other hand, seem to be more useful for reporting what a group is gaining some measure of "certainty" about... and don't seem to be as effective for building relationships. This is just how things seem to me... I'm not selling my position, just sharing it in case it might be useful to you...

I also notice, from my personal experience, that the way Nings are structured - the architecture that's available to "hold" or "contain" our interaction - allows for a kind of alternation between being seen in "public" and being able to build a resource that is semi-private (on your page). And there's something absolutely infectious for me about having that ability to roam out in public and participate in discussions...and read others' discussions...and then if I want to, to build more "personal" relationships on my page and others' personal pages...

As an adult who loves to learn, I love Nings! As an adult who loves to collect information I may need later, I love wikis!

Hope this is useful in some way.

I'd like to hear more about what your group needs to do to "move forward..." Are they not moving forward the way you'd imagined?

Meri

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Permalink Reply by Katherine Watson on March 12, 2008 at 8:00pm

I'm new to Ning and this network (hi all!), but have participated in less-than-successful wikis.

I do think that there is more of a sense of ownership in the Ning network, even if you weren't the creator. With a wiki, someone is always in charge, which is OK, except if it inhibits participation. I realize each Ning network has an owner/creator, but each person who joins is given so much that is their own, as Meri said, each person has their own spaces within the network. I like that!

- Katherine

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Permalink Reply by Roger Wistar on March 20, 2008 at 8:11am

I'm also a bit of a noob with these sorts of technologies, but perhaps you should be using a different tool for the job. If you're interested in a place for discussion, why not just use an online discussion forum (like Ning or something like phpBB)?

I was under the impression that a Wiki was more suited to providing a public group space for creating new information (like a shared document, or some other info repository). But I could be wrong!

Roger

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Permalink Reply by meri walker on March 20, 2008 at 9:11am

I'm following this conversation with great interest! And I'm learning something as I do. This morning, I got the second notification (built in RSS in the Ning architecture) that someone else had contributed to this discussion. That notice piqued my interest... and here I am participating.

There's something about the way this "works" in Ning that keeps me participating more than I generally participate in Wikis I belong to. Of course, I can get notices when pages change in wikis... but I'm a pretty strongly "social" girl (grin) and there's something about conversations changing that's different to me than pages changing...

It's a convention, of course. The end results of both are, actually, the same... both a Ning conversation and a Wiki page hold the "evidence" of different contributions from different perspectives. But the way that content is "presented" here in a Ning keeps the evidence more "vital" for me, more alive. More like being in the room with other people who are interested in and caring about something I'm interested in ... And, for me, that's the juice of social media.

And I'll bet I'm not the only one who feels like this. For others like me - and it sounds like you, Katherine, are like me in this regard - the vitality of an ongoing conversation keeps us adding value in a way that an ongoing "document" revision just doesn't.

Maybe that makes a difference when your purpose is, as Phil wrote above:

"simply discussion around a topic. There isn't any action that we are trying to cause. The original concept was to have a place where people from across Illinois or the Midwest could discuss how they are using the NWEA assessments and learn from each other."

If the purpose is to learn from each other, maybe the architecture of Nings works better...

I do notice that when someone edits my contribution to a Wiki, I wince a little... and it's not just an ego thing (grin). It feels - and this is just a feeling thing - like I was interrupted, sort of, and talked over... because the evidence of my contribution disappears from the page after it was edited.

Here in a Ning, someone may correct me or add a perspective that might change my point of view, too... but the evidence of my contribution remains. And, somehow, that makes me feel more of a part of the group...and that keeps me coming back more... and learning more...

And, then there's the fact that the architecture of Nings gives us all our own "rooms"... that we can manage any way we like, regardless of the way the whole family might be interacting in the public spaces.

I've gone on here at length...and I apologize about the length... but maybe these thoughts and feelings are pertinent to the subject of which architecture works better when the purpose of participation is to have a discussion where people are going to learn from each other... Discussions and learning are social activities, alright, and we all have real-world social experiences we're using to make sense of what we're doing in these virtual spaces. I'm just sharing my internal dialogue here, and it may well be different from others'.

Others? Thoughts? Feelilngs? I'm really curious about how others think about this...

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Permalink Reply by Phil Collins on March 20, 2008 at 8:25pm

Thanks for your thoughts....as I follow the discussion, I'm thinking that we would be better off to switch to a ning site to keep the conversation going.

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Permalink Reply by Todd on March 21, 2008 at 10:56am

It is a site’s environment that helps to create a social presence that in turn allows its members to open up and feel like “real” people in a “real” community. Being new to this site and not much experience with other wikis and blogs which of these do you think is the best place to communicate and learn? This site is nice and I have not had much opportunity to explore, but is there a specific part of operation within Ning that you like over the other sites?

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