MSc EDTECH 2009/2011 students reflections on WIKIEDUCATOR workshop

NOVEMBER 2009
This reflection page has been created for my MSc Educational Technology (MScEDTECH students)cohort 2009/2011 from the University of Mauritius.After completing the online workshop, I invite you to please edit this page with your personal reflections on the wiki experience you have gained. Remember to insert your signature after your contribution by using the signature icon on the menu. This will automatically inlcude your details such as username, time and date.Dorothy 08:17, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dorothy, There is so much to share about WikiEducator Workshop and it was a wonderful experience to participate in the workshop,so much to learn,all those skills especially the editing ones were so interesting and enjoying at the same time. In the beginning I found it really tough to cope with especially when I looked at the tutorials but once I get started with them,and following the instructions given,I was able to do it more smoothly and later with great enthusiasm.I always thought that I would not be able to put my photo there but later with immense joy I was able to do so.I must say the instructions given to do the tutorials were very helpful and the facilitators were very humble and helpful.The most interesting part of the workshop was the certificate we were granted and I am very glad to be certified as wikibuddy.I must thank you for making us participate in this workshop.--Sreechaye 19:16, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dorothy,

These are my reflections. Painstaikenly enough, I have been able to manage few skills and am looking forward to coexplore a little more to be able to complete all tutorials.

The workshop was a fascinating and enriching experience in itself. iT HAS IMMENSELY AND SUCCESSFULLY MADE PROVISIONS FOR EDUCATORS LIKE US TO INTEGRATE A VAST TEACHING AND LEARNING PLATFORM WHERE ALL OUR NEEDS FOR teaching skills have been catered for. Of course, it's a challenging and dynamic endeavour to improve the mauritian technological system. It's high time time for our students at all levels to face the cyber - world. As such, pupils won'surf aimlessly, but use Wikis for educational purposes as research work and note compilation. Only then, a judicious use of IT can be made. --Prema leckraz 18:02, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dorothy, This is hard work and sweat. My major difficulty is that I don't find things that obvious. For instance I completely missed the Edit button at the top of the page and was concentrating on the edit buttons at the right side of the page so I spend a few days working this out! But it's worth it and it's rewarding. Thanks for getting us to do this. Cheers--Smita 15:40, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dorothy, Just to let you know that I have completed the workshop and have learnt lots. However I need to keep practising these skills...--Smita 09:23, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Reflections on WikiEducator Workshop

At the start of the workshop, I thought that it would be very time consuming since it would be 10 days and we would have “assignments” to do. However, when I actually started the workshop, I found it to be extremely interesting. The amount of knowledge I gained was tremendous.


 * 1) 	Inserting pictures and sending them into galleries,
 * 2) 	Editing what we’ve written,
 * 3) 	Making texts bold, italic and underlined,
 * 4) 	Adding bullets and numberings,
 * 5) 	Increasing the font size,
 * 6) 	Creating links to wiki pages(internal) but also to other pages(external),
 * 7) 	Creating sub pages,
 * 8) 	Inserting media
 * 9) 	Converting a pps into swf and inserting it,
 * 10) 	Viewing and editing talk pages and discussion links of other users,
 * 11) 	Reverting changes,
 * 12) 	Inserting iDevices,
 * 13) 	Creating templates
 * 14) 	Copyrights

Learning all this in only a few days seemed to be impossible, but the fact that it was so interesting and capturing, I found no difficulty at all to spend my time learning. Learning was in fact fun.

Furthermore, I got to know the other people who were participating in the workshop. Nellie, Dorothy, as well as the other facilitators, were wonderful. They promptly replied to our queries and I felt that they were right behind us, ready to help at a moment’s notice. I am now looking forward to doing more of the tutorials and learning more so as to be able to add to the free content in a proper structure.

Getting the Wiki Apprentice level certificates was also a memorable moment. I would like now to move forward to get the other certificates. All in all it was simply a great experience.

As for how Wiki can be used in the Mauritian education sector, I think that asking students and teachers to collborate would be a good thing. Creating a site for the school as a user then the password for the school is known by each and every member of the school. The page can contain resources, homeworks by all teachers, discussions and question areas... However, despite all the possible advcantages that this might offer, I think that this might be slightly difficult to begin with. Teachers need to have an open mind to be able to accept that others might be changing or adding to the content. However, in our present system,this might cause problems. More experienced teachers might not feel good about younger ones editing what they have written. Furthermore, the ways that some teachers behave, they might change without without any prior discussion with the original author and do it without any tact. As for students, they might not be too at ease to change content. However, those who have some confidence in themselves, will try to engage in the system and will definitely benefit from it. Just like educational blogging, this seems to be one of the possibilities of systems of education in the future, near or far. -Nimla Philippe 09:38, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

From this workshop I gained a lot of knowledge, I was a little bit confused at the begining but then with practice I was able to add photos, create links (both internal and external) and other things to create my user page. What I appreciated most was the certification, I was really happy when I got it, after much effort and putting a lot of time. The workshop was very interesting and I wish to continue to edit my user page to make it better, I'll try the other tutorials in the list. The facilitators were all so helpful and gave precise answers to all the queries. This learning experience was very different but so enriching and I would like to thank Dorothy for giving this assignment. During the workshop it was so fun editing my user page that I forgot I'll be marked for this. --Sarita Marooty 10:03, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Hello everybody, It is true that we have been learning a lot from this workshop and moreover it was fun. It was hard at the start to get used to the suntax but once this was done then things go on more smoothly. We were supposed to spend 50 mins per day but the tutorials were much more time consuming. Anyway the extra time allocated was not lost time because I personnally learnt a lot not only for wikieducator but now I can edit any wiki pages. I have tried with wikipedia and wikibooks this was as fun. It is also a great priviledge to collaborate to content on internationnally viewed sites such as wikipedia. Thanks to the great team of wikieducators. Congrats to all those having the apprentice 2.

Concerning how wiki can be used in our educational system,I think that it's definitely a good idea. Wikis would help students and teachers alike to engage in collaborative work and reduce competitiveness. However, in our present educational system, I find that this might be hard. Not all students have the means to access to the internet or even have a computer so some will be left behind as usual. Moreover, in our present system, it is competition which primes instead of collaboration and since we teach our students since primary school to be in competition witht their classmates, it would go against what they know to ask them now to collaborate. I also find that it is going to be a technical burden on the student if we ask them to use wiki. What i mean is that the students already need to learn their lessons and they have bulky syllabusses. On top of that we are now asking them to learn to use wiki. Isn't that too much for them??? If we really want to add Wiki to our educational system, then I think that first the whole system must be changed as well as the mentality of both students and teachers. Regards--Gino 17:02, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

--Chrisgun 04:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)  The workshop was a good experience of interacting with the wiki tools and comprehending it. The facilitators Gladys, Nellie, and others have, no doubt, successfully demonstrated wiki in action. After spending much time doing the exercises, you feel you want to practice more to be at ease with the wiki skills. At first you have some fear that maybe you are not doing well enough or fear of spending your time fiddling around and not doing enough about other modules, but gradually your fear gets over as you discover the modules and the easiness of their clear and detailed step by step instructions. If you make a mistake, you can revert back and repeat the exercise again. You learn best from small mistakes and by trial and error. Good guidance from the facilitators and the queries raised by other colleagues kind of clear your doubts and put you back on track. Instructions from the tutorial are easy to follow and great care is taken towards providing guidance to non-technical users. 

It was, furthermore, an experience to meet people from other continents and to form part of the growing circle of educators around the world. Through the connection with participants and discussion across wiki we feel  part of a community. It seems we all had constraint of time otherwise we would have collaborated more on many issues.

I certainly want to come back and make sure that I’ve mastered every bit of it, but after completing lessons from other modules. 

How WIKI can be used in our Mauritian education system? 

It is very simple. There must be a vision formulated by all partners of education( Govt, teachers, parents, students, etc) towards bringing more IT in education to promote learning. The Govt should then schedule an implementation plan at national level with targeted dates of when teachers would have acquired certain ICT skills and using them effectively in their teaching.  Having hands-on experience with Wiki is the best way of learning it. 

So we should start with teachers and Rectors, creating a page on wiki and and teaching them how to create their username and password. A tutorial could be prepared and made available to help them to acquaint themselves with the basic skills of computing. Teachers and Rectors would gradually get in the system. They could be helped by other colleagues. Once they are used to the system, a discussion will start where they would be invited to give comments and reply to other teacher’s remarks. At the same time a team, guiding the discussion, would advise them on many issues such as netiquettes and so on. Some tutorials on the use of word processor, spreadsheet, power points, etc would be there for first-time teachers in ICT. We could add also short videos of teacher’s appreciation of the wiki methods so as to interest other teachers to participate.  Once this stage is over, the teacher can prepare his own page and allow his students to create their account. Likewise there would be many modules( created by teachers) which would help the students to acquire basic computing skills. Discussion would be encouraged between teacher-students and students-students on issues pertaining to the class.  Everything else will follow.  The present team of Msc educational tech students would be the team to start it.  People, reluctant, who don't want to join the electronic band-wagon can always stay in steam-wagons.  Kind regards
 * maths teachers would discuss mistakes in cambridge....
 * English teachers would point out....
 * computer teachers would comment on new syllabus

My Reflection on WIKIEDUCATOR workshop

This workshop has indeed been an exceedingly fruitful experience. I have learnt so many things about Wiki skills like the skills required to format basic text by using bold, italics, headings nad sub-headings, bullet and numbered lists, how to include a link to an external website and also a link to an internal page, how to upload photos that include thumb or frame, placement, size and caption, and how to revert an edit, leaving messages in wikiEducator and also inserting pedagogical templates.Desptite leraning all these skills, I still have so many things to learn. First and foremost, I would like to say that at the beginning, given that I was new to Wiki, I was quite scptis whether I will be able to make it. However, with the facilitators' instructions, I was able to follow the the Tutorials or guidelines. Moreover, each time we had a query, there was always a prompt reply from the facilitators. Though it took quite some time at the initial stage to complete the tutorials in less time than recommended, but yet I did not mind to give my maximum effort to complete them on the respective day. Day by day, it started becoming quite easy to understand Wiki and it became very interesting as well.

How WIKI can be used in our Mauritian education system?

Education, as defined by George F. Knellor, is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, values, and skills from generation to another through institutions. In the present time, we are all aware that technology is an increasingly influential factor in education. As Blurton Craig has put it Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are a “diverse set of tools and resources used to communicate, create, disseminate, store, and manage information.” So definitely, Wiki would be very beneficial to not only the teachers or Educators and also to the students or those invloved in the education system. By introducing the concept of Wiki skills at schools or colleges, I think that the government requires every teacher to pass a benchmark in order to demonstrate that he or she has attained basic information technology skills or they may be given some training sessions so that they attain those basic IT skills. After that, just like we have been taught in the workshop how to create our page, in the same way, the teachers can create their own so that the students can create their account to log in and in this way they can have access to a pool of information related to their education. This major change can be the drive to promote professionalism in education. There may be more interaction between the teachers and the students based on their respective subjects and also more active participation from the part of the students .--Soobhadrah Bokhoree 18:02, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

My reflections on WikiEducator workshop

Participating in this workshop has been very enriching and constructive for me. Through this workshop I have been able to acquire wiki skills such as writing and editing text, formatting text, inserting bullets and numbering, inserting images, creating links, templates and subpages and much more. What I enjoyed most was creating and editing my very own userpage. It was also most interesting to visit other participants’ userpages and learn how to improve from them.

At the beginning I found the workshop confusing and rather hard to follow. But with the help and comments from the facilitators I was able to overcome it. The facilitators were very helpful and always showed their appreciation through advices and words of encouragement. The learning environment was pleasant and the daily instructions and tutorials were constructive and easy to follow. I happened to fall back a lot but I managed to catch up this week. I mostly appreciated being granted certification for our effort and work done.

This workshop has been an enriching experience. It has allowed people from different countries, cultures and academic skills to collaborate and share their knowledge. I thank my lecturer Mrs Dorothy for having exposed to us this platform.

I think in the Mauritian context the use of wiki is a creditable initiative to promote innovative learning. Nowadays many educators are referring to content available on the Internet to prepare their lessons. Students as well are turning around to the web to find learning materials related to subjects they are studying. More and more people including educators and students are increasingly showing interest in educational websites. Therefore, I think wiki can slowly but surely be implemented in our educational system.

But for this to happen, it would require great effort from educators, students and the Government. The Government can provide training sessions or organize workshops for educators to disseminate the basic skills required to create and use wikis. These educators can in return teach their students the necessary wiki skills. Thus, both educators and students will be able to use wiki as a collaborative environment to share educational content. Moreover more facilities should provided in terms of acquiring computers and Internet connection. --Reshma Sookun 20:45, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

My Reflection on WIKIEDUCATOR workshop

Hi Dorothy mem,

First of all, I would like to thank you for giving me us the opportunity to participate in this workshop. Not forgetting Gladys, my sincere thanks to her also for her prompt reply, guidance and for solving all my problems concerning this workshop.

At the beginning, I was getting problem to access the workshop. She replied my mail by giving some instructions to follow. I just follow them and my problem was solved. I started on the 3rd day of the tutorial and throughout the workshop she kept on encouraging me through her mails. It’s just because of her that I was able to catch up with all my tutorials.

The workshop and its tutorials make us realize the importance of wiki in our life. It is indeed an essential tool in the field of education. Apart from making provision for free open educational resources, wiki promotes collaborative participation. Since tutorials were available for learners to operate and manipulate until understanding is mastered on a given task, we successfully acquire the basic wiki skills. We were also able to view history, all our contributions, recent changes among others. For me, it was really a nice experience to participate in an online workshop and learn about wiki and its editing skills. What I really appreciate during the workshop is that no programming skills were required. Anyone who wishes to share his or her teaching and learning material can participate. They have to register themselves.

Besides, the communication between learners and the facilitators were easily done through discussion threads. Unfortunately I came to know about it at a later stage. For any queries, I mailed Gladys directly on her e-mail address. This workshop has also allowed many educators to keep in touch. Thus it has facilitated the establishment of community networks and collaboration existing free content initiatives in education. Since it was part of an assignment, we have taken this workshop seriously and learn to be an active participant in the community.

Mauritian Context:

Coming to Mauritian context, we can observe that only a handful of educators and learners are making use of wiki. There are many reasons behind. Many Mauritian educators doubt the quality of educational materials available on the internet. Even I, before doing my MSc Educational technologies course was like them. I was always against the use of wikipedia for I didn’t rely on the quality of its educational material. Previously I heard that wikipedia can be edited by anyone, that’s why I never trusted the educational material. May be in Mauritius many people are still having the same thought I had previously. So here, I think people should be made aware of the importance of wiki in the educational field. Sensitizing people might promote wiki in Mauritius. This can be made possible through mails. We, students, can take the responsibility to do it.

Here, teachers are used to spoon-feeding and so are students. Teachers are very reluctant to change their traditional pedagogical forms of teaching. Because teachers do not trust open educational resources, they discourage their students from digging information from the internet. Mauritian teachers are unaware of the fact that the shared learning gives student an opportunity to engage in discussion, take the responsibility of their own learning and thus become critical thinkers. Wiki enables discussions which allow learners to express their knowledge, to learn in a new environment where they can observe, reflect and share. I personally believe that teachers should give the means to students to succeed on their own. Hence sensitizing teachers of our island can help in implementing wiki in our system of education.

Implementing wiki in Mauritius can result in reduction of cost for classes will be virtual and learning materials will be free of cost. Students will not have to invest on books. The important infrastructures are the computer and the internet access. Here, the government should see to it that its population is computer-literate and that they can afford to buy a computer per house. For that, the government is already providing loans at a relatively low rate. The only concern is that not everybody get access to the internet. In order to encourage people to have internet in their home, the price of internet must be reduced.

Conclusion:

I hope that wikieducator will succeed in its aim of bridging digital divide by providing free E-learning content. I promise to invite more and more people to contribute their knowledge to this community.--Deepa Bundhoo 10:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

--Youshra.rajabalee 10:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC) My reflections on WikiEducator workshop

Hello everybody,

It's so true that there was so much to learn from this workshop and it was really fun. At first, I did not really understand how the workshop really function, how we are going to follow these tutorials and so on. But as I started reading the tutorial contents, I realise that everything has been defined in a detailed way using a step by step approach. I believe, even a person, without any knowledge of HTML will be fully conversant with the wiki workshop as well as creating a user page.

Furthermore, creating a user page, this is a very professional approach to share our details, our professional and educational backround, yet allowing us to make contacts all over the world with people involve in the education sector. Personally, I have been able to create a network of friends with this workshop and I have been developing good professional relationship with the workshop facilitators, who have been assisting all the time. It was so fun editing my user page and without forgetting the certification aspect, which was really encouraging. It keeps stimulating me to update my page, using new syntaxes. For one moment, I forgot it was an assignment given in our Social Networking module, as it was so much fun to work on it.

However, as for how wiki can be used in our Mauritian education sector, I think that each school could create a user page, where all teachers of each school could input and upload their module content resources, as well as courseworks and discussions. Therefore, the teachers can update these pages often by uploading assignments to be given. This could help, in case of torrential rains or any other natural calamities, where students cannot attend the class, yet they will be able to access the school page and to know on which topic they could work on, as teachers will be updating these pages.

I would like to thank Dorothy for introducing us to this workshop and for giving us this opportunity to work on this assignment. It was a very enriching experience for me.

Thanks Youshra