Teaching Fashion Writing with Wikis.....

As I prepare to leave K-State and become a Professor elsewhere, I am working on preparing courses on fashion communication. While wikis are not really used in the industry (blogs and social media are the most commonly worked with, and taught, technological modes of communication) I decided they could be used to create a class project on different trends in fashion.

Below is a rough sketch of the lesson plan....I will need to enhance it once I truly understand how to work a wiki myself.

1)    Tracking the Trends: Examining the Evolution of Fashion

2)    Undergraduate Apparel Marketing and Design students

3)    Objectives: a) work collaboratively as part of a group to trace historical fashion trends; b) track a fashion trend from its earliest appearance to contemporary use; c) provide five web links that give the reader a textual and visual representation of the trend; d) write a paragraph describing the trend and its impact on contemporary fashion

4)    Contemporary fashion magazines, History of Fashion Textbook, www.elle.com, www.vogue.com, museumofcostume.co.uk, fashion blogs, popular magazines, historical records

5)    a) Go to www.wikispaces.com and create an account. Once you have done so please contact me so I can give you permission to join the group. This should be completed before the end of week one.

6)    Select one of the following fashion trends and add it to the wiki page (animal prints, leggings, pointy-toe shoes, spikes, chains, peplums, neon, body piercings, skinny jeans, sequins

7)    Grading Criteria: selected at least one trend and found 5 web links that provide visual and textual information about the trend; wrote a detailed paragraph describing the trend and how it has impacted contemporary society; traced trend from its earliest historical period and provided references; worked in cooperation wth the group to create a public wiki page

Wikis.....what the heck is a wiki and why would I want one!!!!

So last week we had to think about and discuss the differences between using a blog and a message board, as well as consider the pros and cons of blogs. This week it's wikis.

I must confess...I am wiki-ignorant. Of course I know what they are; after all, my job requires many hours logged on a computer, but I have never really used one and I definitely have not created one. To be honest, I've never been a fan.

I know that the research literature claims they "help groups collaborate, share, and build online content...[especially for] distance learners who are separated by time and place" (West & West, 2009, p. 3) and I do not dispute this fact. As a matter of fact I find this to be a major pro. I think that the ability to allow students to actively engage with content and one another is a boon to their educational experience, especially online.

But I cannot help but be cautious.....

I never let my students cite wikis for classes. Let's be realistic; inaccuracies exist in these things...prolifically. Sources, such as the minimal sample below:
http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/PRJournal/Documents/2012DiStaso.pdf
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/9211336/Six-out-of-10-Wikipedia-business-entries-contain-factual-errors.html
http://libguides.indstate.edu/wikipedia
(all of which are internet related) discuss the factual mishaps that occur in wikipedia. Sometimes misinformation is published and sometimes the information ends up being out-dated (this is generally not true for wikipedia since they have full-time staff now to help ensure entries are up-to-date). Unfortunately, other wikis who lack wikipedia's manpower are at risk of becoming outdated and error ridden. Ropog (2007) remarked about the Adult Literacy Education Wiki that if the site is to "grow and remain current...it must be updated and checked regularly for content and discussion additions" (p. 170) otherwise it would become outdated and full of errors if its users did not maintain it and keep up with the entries. This seems like a lot of work for something that can change from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day.

While I see the value of a tool to which everyone is able to contribute, I also see the risks. I see it as something students could use to engage with as a means of building a project and using as a thinking tool to flesh out ideas, but I don't see it as more than that.

But I am always open to experimentation, especially in the classroom. The student cohort we are currently experiencing in adult education at the undergraduate level is getting younger (at least younger than me) and most of them are more technologically literate than I am, so I will not toss out the idea of using a wiki; I just want to make sure my students are aware of the great responsibility that comes with creating something that will live on long after the 16-week semester has passed.

I want to consider the questions of my own culpability.
-- What is my continued responsibility as a teacher to ensure course-created wikis stay factual and current once the semester is complete?
--How do I go about such a seemingly daunting task?
--How might I justify unpublishing work that my students worked on (I assume with a great amount of dedication) without it being a discredit to them and their time investment?

References

Ropog, M. M. (2007). Collaborating with Colleagues in Cyberspace. Adult Basic Education and Literacy Journal, 1(3), 169-171.

West, J. A., & West, M. L. (2009). Using wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write Web. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Blogs or Message boards....which is better and which one should be used for education???

Well, here's to the first week of blog activity in the Adult Learners and Technology course. Blogging in general is something that I rather enjoy. Personally, outside of this blog, I have two blogs--one that I do not write on regularly and another that I try to update daily (and if that is not possible then at least two or three times per week). Those blogs, however, are much different than this one. This blog is an educational requirement, which, for me, puts it into a different realm of necessity. Santos (2011) found in his study that blogs served as an"innovative way for students to engage in reflective writing on classroom topics..." (p. 18); his results make me feel a bit more secure about using this tool as a classroom practice both in this course and in the scope of my own courses.

This week's question requires us to address how a blog differs from a message board. In my opinion, blogs are much more personal than message boards. Because of this I have never really associated them with use in my classroom. When K-State developed its wiki and blog platform I was fascinated and began thinking about ways in which I could incorporate the technology into my classroom next summer when I teach my Women and the Politics of Fashion course. I am hoping this course will show me how I might effectively use the technology and still keep blogs more personal. Witte (2007) discussed a student who felt that writing on her computer was different than writing in school. Her resultant project, the Talkback Project, reinforced the desire student's possess to make their voices heard in a more creative way than they are typically able to do in the classroom environment. Yet, Witte's project was not without flaws as she discovered when the school administrators demanded its cessation.

Technology makes us vulnerable. This is a hard lesson we often learn in inconvenient ways. I think about Dr. Kang's directive to not post identifying information in our blogs if we do not want others outside of the course to know our personal information. His advice implies that our use of the blog for educational reasons places us in a space of vulnerability outside of the classroom. While I do not see this as being an issue for many adult learners, I do see this as a major issue in classrooms with younger students who may not be quite as cognizant of, or even care about, security risks to their person if they divulge too much personal information over the internet.

Outside of vulnerability, blogs also requite access to technology, something which may not be available to everyone. However, as adult learners it is more likely that we will have access to the necessary technology than will younger students. What I do see as a potential issue for adult learners is a resistance to new technological tools, such as what I felt when first finding out that we must use a blog instead of the message board that I am used to utilizing in my coursework.

So despite how this turns out, I am interested in using the blog in the classroom. This should prove to be an exciting journey and I look forward to making my blog entries more interesting as the weeks progress.

On another note, does anyone know if we are encouraged to embed images, videos, etc...into our blog posts? And if so, what types of materials are we going to be covering?

I guess this goes to show that I am not really sure how a blog and an education can really go together in a creative way that fits each student's learning style.

Works cited

Santos, A. (2011). Blogs as a learning space: Creating text of talks. Contemporary Issues in Education          Research, 4(6), 15-19.

Wittle, S. (2007). That's online writing, not boring school writing: Writing with blogs and the Talkback          

     Project. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 51(2), 92-96.