Advertisement

The logic of wikis: The possibilities of the Web 2.0 classroom

  • Michael Glassman
  • Min Ju Kang
Article
First Online:

Abstract

The emergence of Web 2.0 and some of its ascendant tools such as blogs and wikis have the potential to dramatically change education, both in how we conceptualize and operationalize processes and strategies. We argue in this paper that it is a change that has been over a century in coming. The promise of the Web 2.0 is similar to ideas proposed by Pragmatists such as Charles Peirce and John Dewey. Peirce proposed the logic of abduction as critical for the types of unique/progressive thinking that leads to creative problem solving and/or discovery. While logic based in deduction offers outcomes with certainty, logic based in abduction offers potentially valuable insights. Dewey tried to implement progressive education in the classrooms. Dewey’s ideas, while influential, were often misunderstood, or considered too idealistic and/or unworkable in the traditional classrooms. Logics based in abduction required that different major premises and hypotheses for problem solving be held simultaneously and over time. This type of scenario is often times difficult if not impossible in education based on direct interactions. Hypertext, especially as capture through emerging tools of Web 2.0, may offer the technologies that enable the type of information based networks within the education process that promote abduction and the democratic classroom as Dewey envisioned.

Keywords

Wikis Web 2.0 Cooperative/collaborative learning Improving classroom teaching Interactive learning environment 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. Barabasi, A. (2003). Linked: How everything is connected to everything else and what it means. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
  2. Bardini, T. (2000). Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, coevolution, and the origins of personal computing. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  3. Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
  4. Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature: A natural unity. New York: Bantam Books.Google Scholar
  5. Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
  6. Bereiter, C. (1991). Implications of connectionism for thinking about rules. Educational Researcher, 20(3), 10–16.Google Scholar
  7. Berners-Lee, T. (1999). Weaving the web. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
  8. Boling, E., Castek, J., Zawalinski, L., Barton, K., & Nierlich, T. (2008). Collaborative literacy: Blogs and internet projects. The Reading Teacher, 61(6), 504–506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of language: Its nature, origin, and use. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
  10. Cress, U., & Kimmerle, J. (2008). A systemic and cognitive view on collaborative knowledge building with wikis. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 3, 105–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Davise, J., Fensel, D., & van Harmelen, F. (2002). Towards the semantic web: Ontology driven knowledge management. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
  12. Désilets, A., & Paquet, S. (2005). Wiki as a tool for web-based collaborative story telling in primary school: A case study. In P. Kommers & G. Richards (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2005 (pp. 770–777). Chesapeake: AACE.Google Scholar
  13. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: McMillan.Google Scholar
  14. Dewey, J. (1922). Human nature and conduct: And introduction to social psychology. New York: Henry Holt.Google Scholar
  15. Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: The theory of inquiry. New York: Henry Holt.Google Scholar
  16. Dewey, J., & Bentley, A. (1949). Knowing and the known. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
  17. Edwards, C., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. (1998). The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia approach. Westport: Ablex.Google Scholar
  18. Eldridge, M. (1998). Transforming experience: John Dewey’s cultural instrumentalism. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.Google Scholar
  19. Flavell, J. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive–developmental inquiry. The American Psychologist, 34(10), 906–911.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Forte, A., & Bruckman, A. (2010). Citing, writing and participatory media: Wikis as learning environments in the high school classroom. International Journal of Learning and Media, 1(4), 23–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Glassman, M. (2001). Dewey and Vygotsky: Society, experience, and inquiry in educational practice. Educational Researcher, 30(4), 3–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. Glassman, M. (2004). Running in circles: Chasing Dewey. Educational Theory, 54(3), 315–342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Glassman, M., & Kang, M. (2009). Five classrooms: Different forms of democracy and their relationship to cultural pluralisms. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1–22.Google Scholar
  24. Glassman, M., & Kang, M. (2010). Pragmatism, connectionism and the internet: A mind’s new storm. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(6), 1412–1418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. Gould, S. J. (1987). Time’s arrow, time’s cycle: Myth and metaphor in the discovery of geological time. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  26. Grant, L. (2006). Using Wikis in schools: a case study. Retrieved from http://www.futurelab.org.uk/download/pdfs/research/disc_papers/Wikis_in_Schools.pdf
  27. Hollan, J., Hutchins, E., & Kirsh, D. (2000). Distributed cognition: Towards a new foundation for computer-human interaction research. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 7(2), 174–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Hume, D. (1748/1957). An inquiry concerning human understanding. New York: The Liberal Arts.Google Scholar
  29. Katz, L., & Chard, S. (2000). Engaging children’s minds: The project approach (2nd ed.). Stamford: Ablex.Google Scholar
  30. Kilpatrick, W. (1936). Remaking the curriculum. New York: Newson.Google Scholar
  31. Kim, H. N. (2008). The phenomenon of blogs and theoretical model of blog use in educational contexts. Computers & Education, 51(3), 1342–1352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. Konolige, K. (1992). Abduction versus closure in causal theories. Artificial Intelligence, 53(2–3), 255–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
  34. Lih, A. (2009). The Wikipedia revolution: How a bunch of nobodies created the world's greatest encyclopedia. New York: Hyperion.Google Scholar
  35. Lin, W., Yueh, H. P., Liu, Y. L., Murkami, M., Kakusho, K., & Minoh, M. (2006). Blog as a tool to develop e-learning experience in an international distance course. In Proceedings of the Sixth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT06). Google Scholar
  36. Menand, L. (2001). The metaphysical club: A story of ideas in America. New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux.Google Scholar
  37. National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk. WA: U.S. government printing office.Google Scholar
  38. Nelson, T. H. (1965). A file structure for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate. In Proceedings of the ACM Twentieth National Conference (pp. 84–100).Google Scholar
  39. Nelson, T. H. (1995). The heart of connection: Hypermedia unified by transclusion. Communications of the ACM, 38, 31–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  40. Oreilly, T. (2007). What is web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. Communications & Strategies, 65(1), 17–37.Google Scholar
  41. Paavola, S. (2004). On the origin of ideas: An abductivist approach to discovery. Helsinki: University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
  42. Palincsar, A. S. (1998). Social constructivist perspectives on teaching and learning. Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 345–375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  43. Peirce, C. S. (1903/1997). Pragmatism as a principle and method of right thinking. The 1903 Harvard lectures on pragmatism. In: P. A. Turrisi (Ed.), Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
  44. Peirce, C. S. (1923/1998). Chance, love and logic: Philosophical essays. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
  45. Peters, V. L., & Slotta, J. D. (2010). Scaffolding knowledge communities in the classroom: New opportunities in the Web 2.0 era. In M. J. Jacobson & P. Reimann (Eds.), Designs for learning environments of the future. New York: Springer Science Business Media.Google Scholar
  46. Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1969). The psychology of the child. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
  47. Prawat, R. S. (2001). Dewey and Peirce, the philosopher’s philosopher. Teachers College Record, 103(4), 667–721.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  48. Raymond, E. S. (2001). The cathedral and the bazaar: Musing on Linux and open source by an accidental revolutionary. Sebastapol: O’Reilly & Associates Inc.Google Scholar
  49. Rheingold, H. (2002). Smart mobs: The next social revolution. Cambridge: Perseus.Google Scholar
  50. Rumelhart, D. E. & McClelland, J. L. (1986). Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition: Volume 1: Foundations. University of California, San Diego. PDP Research Group.Google Scholar
  51. Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2006). Knowledge building: Theory, pedagogy, and technology. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 97–118). New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  52. Simon, H. A. (1987). Is scientific discovery a topic in the philosophy of science? Retrieved May 26, 2010, from http://octopus.library.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/tiff2pdf/simon/box00014/fld00954/bdl0001/doc0001/simon.pdf
  53. Slotta, J. & Peters, V. (2008). A blended model for knowledge communities: Embedding scaffolded inquiry. Proceedings of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences. Utrecht.Google Scholar
  54. Stalder, F. & Hirsh, J. (2002). Open source intelligence. Retrieved November 1, 2010, from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/961/882.
  55. Stross, R. (2009). Planet google: One company’s plan to organize everything we know. New York: Free.Google Scholar
  56. Sun, R. (2002). Duality of the mind: A bottom up approach toward cognition. Mahwah: Lawrence Earlbaum Asssociates.Google Scholar
  57. Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton (Eds.), The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky: Vol. 1, problems of general psychology. New York: Plenum.Google Scholar
  58. Yu, C. H. (1994). Abduction? Deduction? Induction? Is there logic of exploratory data analysis? Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LO.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© International Society of the Learning Sciences, Inc.; Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2011

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Human Development and Family ScienceThe Ohio State UniversityColumbusUSA
  2. 2.Department of Child and Family StudiesYonsei UniversitySeoulSouth Korea

Personalised recommendations

Cite article

Buy options