Reflection On Wiki Activity

The Six Thinking Hats, source: Multiplevoices; accessed on 8 March 2013

This week I participated in an online wiki activity. The task was to engage in "The Six Thinking Hats" exercise reflecting on mobile phones in education.

Now, just a few words about de Bono's unique thinking routine.
In "The Six Thinking Hats" each "hat" represents a different approach to the question, allowing to gather individual opinions, which subsequently collaborate to lead to a final conclusion. The aim of this process is to maintain focus by breaking down the question of mobile phone usage in classrooms into sub-categories as dealing with a wide range of information and perspectives without thorough consideration of different attitudes results in lack of accuracy and chaos. The concept of "The Thinking Hats" reflects the ideas of four learning theories. Behaviourism "shows" in early stages of our work in each "hat" sub-category. Once the framework is understood and memorised based on our answers provided in the first box, our responses to other questions are automatically shaped. The theoretical structure of "The Six Hats" concept is the "conditioning" stage , which creates the platform for new behaviour development as "it occurs through interaction with the environment" (Cherry). According to cognitivism, the moment of change in behaviour occurs as a result of information processing in our brains. Therefore, "people are not programmed animals that merely respond to environmental stimuli" (Edmundson, 2010, p. 48) and the mind is like a computer: "information comes in, is being processed, and leads to certain outcomes"(here). Taking into account responses of other wiki contributors, helps us assess what should be relevant to our thinking, e.g. "if someone has similar ideas to mine, how do I come up with something new?" Thus, cognitivism in this case, can be identified in the form of individual opinions shaped upon already existing statements made by other group participants. Each different-coloured hat equipped with leading questions engaging in the cognitivist thinking process, leads to the constructivism stage, where social discussion begins. It is not individual contribution partially based on "what others have said" but active brainstorming, based on our knowledge and past experiences, involving responses to other statements (e.g. "I agree with Tom that mobile phones could pose a threat to education at schools").
Despite numerous similarities, connectivism unlike constructivism focuses on methods of finding knowledge, rather than the process of learning. The digital learning theory stresses the importance of using technologies in attaining new information, which fits into the idea of wiki social collaboration. According to Siemens (2004), knowledge rests in a diversity of opinions and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning and finally, the ability to see the links between variety of sources as a valid point of significance in the connectivist field, is relevant to the scaffolding idea of The Six Thinking Hats.

WIKI ≠ FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION?

Are we "controlled" or "in control" on the Internet? Source: Photobucket, accessed on 8 March 2013

Working with wiki was an interesting experience - daunting, confusing at times, surprising. I would like to make a couple of points:
1) The visual side - very disappointing! Website seems outdated and hard to navigate. In the discussion groups about mobile phones, none of the "hat" images would appear on my page. I tried to refresh the site a number of times, making changes to my Internet settings did not help either. Have any of you had the same problem?
The "messiness" did not appeal to me at all - this is coming from a very chaotic person! There is far too much information "all over the place".
2) I personally thought the experience with online wiki space was going to be based on "brainstorming". The idea of brainstorming in this case proves to be a failure. I can justify my opinion with the following definition of this term:

Process for generating creative ideas and solutions through intensive and freewheeling group discussion. Every participant is encouraged to think aloud and suggest as many ideas as possible, no matter seemingly how outlandish or bizarre. Analysis, discussion, or criticism of the aired ideas is allowed only when the brainstorming session is over and evaluation session begins / Business Dictionary

The fact that our opinions can be edited or completely removed, whether purposefully or accidentally, kills the philosophy of social brainstorming, where all opinions are respected and any criticism is only to be conducted during evaluation process in a group. I was placed in the first "team" (there were three in total), where the amount of opinions seemed rather overwhelming to begin with, but it was interesting to read other students' views and perspectives on the given topic. I posted a couple of comments, which were removed as a result of "overriding" - another person was editing the same page at the same time as me. It was highly frustrating considering the amount of time and thought I put into my writing.
I also would like to draw attention to the process of prioritising ideas and choosing top five in this task. I cannot see how this could work through individual decision-making, i.e. removing someone else's comment without prior consultation with the rest of the group. This ability to "control" each other's statements, reminds me of the idea of absolute democracy. To those who are not familiar with this term, despite the presence of the word "democracy", its concept belongs to one of the three forms of dictatorship. I felt out of control, slightly manipulated, somewhat excluded. I felt that my freedom of expression was restricted.
Having identified the negative points, I would like to suggest some improvements. First of all, I think that the initial discussion relevant to each "hat", should be conducted in the form of opinion poll, where everybody would have an opportunity to add their statement, which then would be publicly voted. The opinions with the highest scores would make it to the top five. Any questions or concerns regarding voting could be posted in a specially designated forum area. I feel this would be more appropriate rather than individual editing of somebody else's work.
I think students could certainly benefit from this online space where different ideas are shared. Nevertheless, there are many other more "attractive" ways to collaborate without "virtual vandalism", e.g. discussion forums or even blogs are a great platform for expressing our thoughts and discussing them with other contributors.

References:

• Brainstorming [Def. 1] In The Business Dictionary. Retrieved on March 8, 2013, from http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/brainstorming.html
• Cherry, K. Introduction To Classical Conditioning. Retrieved on March 8, 2013, from http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/a/classcond.htm
• De Bono Thinking Systems. Six Thinking Hats. Retrieved on March 8, 2013, from http://www.debonothinkingsystems.com/tools/6hats.htm
• Edmundson, A. (2010). Cases on Globalised and Culturally Appropriate E-Learning: Challenges and Solutions. Hershey: Information Science Reference. 
• Learning Theories. Cognitivism. Retrieved on March 8, 2013, from http://www.learning-theories.com/cognitivism.html