This past week we had a history mid-term examination.  I must say that I have not had to write without interruption for 80 minutes, with a pen and paper that is, for quite some time.  I needed every second in those 80 minutes in order to answer the questions.  All two of them.  I could smell our papers burning as the clock ticked on.  I know I wasn’t the only one feeling this as this picture was posted right after the mid-term to our Facebook group: 

The comments that followed were all in support of this picture being a great representation of OUR last 5 minutes.

Now why do I bring this up on my blog?  Well during this flurry or writing I found myself reverting to the shortened online writing style of abbreviations.  I found myself having to pay attention more than I’d like as a way of avoiding this, however, I did find it difficult to keep my train of thought going at the same time.  Which brings me to the question: does post-education promote this skill as much as it should?  I mean, having the computer and being able to reshape our ideas instantly is really great and all, but when it comes to good old fashioned writing are we failing?

I think of all the times that I write.  I write to take notes (generally another shorthand method) I write to…………………well I don’t write all that often and if I do it usually is shorter than the standard 160 characters allowable by Twitter and text messaging.  A quick post-it, a sentence or two in my notes for class.

When it came to writing this exam I found it difficult not being able to “backspace”, I found myself having to scratch out my use of abbreviations.  Now I’ve read a few articles on this topic and found that this doesn’t seem to be a problem for children in school.  Is it because they have grown up with this parallel language?  I do believe that writing with pen and paper serves a purpose.  It forces us to formulate our thoughts into a clear and coherent way PRIOR to scribing it.  When we use computers/technology we are constantly involved in this process and therefor develop only a short attention span to the structure and outline of our thoughts.  I couldn’t imagine writing a 20 page paper by hand; I could however, imagine that we would have better writers and thinkers as a result.  Some may disagree but that’s ok.

I also draw on the point that due to the sheer amount of information we had to spew out and the time frame we were given that maybe naturally my brain adjusted to a quicker way of communicating what I was trying to say.  As the ideas built up waiting in line to meet the paper I found urgency start to kick in, coinciding with the use of abbreviations and shorthand notes.

That’s all for now!

Three weeks ago I decided that I would start a wiki on my blog as a way to connect with my classmates.  We all have pretty irregular social/work schedules so I figured having a common place that WASN’T Facebook would be a great way to study.  We had a History mid-term on the way and having very little background in Philosophy/History but realizing the power of learning from my peers, I posted my idea to our Facebook group.   Since it was a requirement that we keep a double entry journal for this course, I figured my classmates would post their notes and we could all benefit.

Immediately I had Facebook “likes” and nothing but great comments, but NO contributions from anyone other than me.  This needs time to sink in, so I left it for a few days.  I checked back a few days later to find no contributions from others.  Alright.  I added a few more details to the wiki and did a general outline with pictures for each Philosopher.  I’ll check back in a couple of days again.

This time I left if for a week.  Upon checking back, STILL no contributions.  Hmmmm.  At this point I am getting pretty discouraged.  Did I spend my study time creating something that only I use?  I was starting to think so.  At this point, I naturally fell behind on keeping it up and lost hope for it all together.

Three days prior to our History Exam I get a notification of a post on our cohort Facebook group.  It’s @ae_hicks and she was making an announcement to our cohort of the wiki page I had created and how she was really benefiting from it as she used it to study.  I check back to the wiki.  What do you think?  Any contributions?  Nothing!  Hmmm.

I was departing from my PE class when @ae_hicks and @lazarukk approached me to tell me how they really have enjoyed and found the wiki to be useful and thanked me for setting it up.  They continued to tell me that it hadn’t gone unnoticed as it may have been looking to me.   They assured me that many of our classmates had recently checked it out and had planned to contribute.  I’m now sensing a very strong passive aggressive mentality here.  Hmm.  Some had mentioned that they didn’t feel their notes would benefit anyone else.  I didn’t say anything.  I don’t want anyone to feel pressured or feel like they are onstage, rather get used to sharing their point of view or angle on learning with the rest of us, we do have much to learn.  Who knows, maybe I might understand your notes more than you might think!

The night before the exam, Thursday, I attended the John Abbott lecture at Uvic on 21 Century Learning and Teaching.  As I was using my phone to keep an eye on the Twitter feed (which sadly consisted of maybe 5 people 3 of which looked to be streaming it online), my phone died.  It was at this exact point that my classmates decided to start using the wiki.  Some were in pairs studying adding to the wiki, some were individuals just popping in to see what’s going on.  That’s ok too!  But what was more ironic was that Edublogs had done something to cause my site to be redirected to a Mrs. Watson’s blog.  Many were using it and suddenly it copped out.  Facebook and Twitter was now furiously sending out notifications to me about all this, however since I had decided to attend the lecture without first charging my phone I was completely oblivious.  As far as I was concerned everything was still the same on the wiki.  Sparse.

The talk on Facebook was about Edublogs possibly being “hacked” or something like it.  bmwallace17 even brought up the idea of creating a Google Document so they could continue anyways.  I really liked seeing that comment.  This is exactly what I want to see more of in our cohort.

Reading back the Facebook comments you can see the wave of frenzy in reaction to the event, the rationalizing, the questions and the collaboration for a solution.  All within the timeframe of one hour this occurred.  Edublogs corrected the problem and everyone realized that it was up and going again.  I also must note that there was much learning going on during this process.  Some people had questions.  For instance one comment was that all they could see was Deryck’s posts and no one else’s.  What she was reading was in fact everyone’s contributions.

So.  When I get home after the lecture I plug in my phone.  I thought my phone was having a seizure as immediately it lit up with over 30 notifications from Facebook (yes I Push Facebook notifies to my cellphone, but only the school related stuff).

I tried to go to my blog but it seemed to be doing the same thing to me even though everyone else by this time was able to access it again.  I logged into my account and messaged support.  Immediately they responded claiming they had done something on their side to cause this, that it’s been fixed and apologized.  Great.

The Wiki took off after all and I am so happy with it.  I figure that since there was an interest in it I created an actual wikispace for each of our classes.  Wikispaces has many more options and administration controls than that of edublogs (unless I’m missing something).

I have now created:

311.wikispaces.com

301.wikispaces.com

303.wikispaces.com

305.wikispaces.com

307.wikispaces.com

I realized afterwards that we really only need one or two of these classes to be a wiki, however having them there ready to go may spark some ideas from others that could be useful.  So who knows.

I plan on keeping the history wiki going for the rest of the semester as we have a cumulative exam.  I hope now that my classmates will use this for their weekly notes and comments on the readings so we can again use them to study with later on.

All in all I am extremely happy with this and my classmates.  Thank you to those of you who were active in gaining momentum on this.  It’s much appreciated.  I hope you can take something of this with you to your future classrooms.

I can’t wait to work with @natashakardos and @angelliu16 on our Psychology project on the construction of gender.  We want to utilize some technology such as Google Stories Search Creator, Wordle, visible tweets and QR codes, but that’s for a different post.

-Until then.