Leigh offers valuable ideas on wikis: "the aggregation of individual efforts and then the collaboration...one-way aggregation is only half useful. Being able to quickly and easily compile an information piece on a wiki page from a variety of already existing information and media is great, being able to then quickly edit and add your own information around that media is even better, but to be able to dynamically export that page in true Web2 fashion would be the bomb!"
In response, Alan Levine presents approaches to aggregation and content remixing through extensions in MediaWiki: "I think 90% of the users of MediaWiki stray as far as changing the logo in the top left and 95% of us use the stock Monobook style I feel like I’ve only scraped down maybe 5 or 10% of what is there. It’s cool to see even more unfolding out there, especially as wikis grow more in variety and interesting uses out there."
..and as Leigh asks, when does this stop being a wiki? Aside from being a language game, I'm much more intrigued with the conceptual elements of wikis and blogs. A year ago or so, I posted on the functionality issue: "the real value of blogs and wikis is not the tool itself. It's what the tool enables". Blogs aren't blogs like they were when the first started - the functionality has increased enormously (remember the first generation of Blogger?). Now we use tags, categories, images, trackbacks, etc. to extend the use of blogs. But the means of expressing ourselves as individuals or groups remains the same with blogs. Scott Leslie offered a link to John Maxwell's presentation - love the statement that wikis are "simplest thing that could possibly work". I imagine the tools we use today for communication and collaboration will bear small resemblance to the tools we'll use in a few years time (I saw one illustration of a wiki in Austria last year that used wikis as a knowledge management system, recording an individual's interactions with information and keeping track of key ideas - so after posting thoughts, the wiki would come to know a person and an organization - recognizing patterns and suggesting "oh, last year, you had a similar idea here"...or "Susan in HR is working on this concept as well").
The issue being explored by Leigh and Alan has two aspects: a) the use of functional content: how do we aggregate, mix, and extend content , and b) our identity as content creators and individuals...for use in different spaces. If I contribute on a wiki, but want my contribution to come from my blog, how can we do that without cutting and pasting. Reminds me a bit of designing a relational database - we want the content in one place, but repurposed for many uses. Perhaps the concept required is of a web database that allows us to open our content for numerous systems to use...but the core still stays in our system. The problem arises, however, when our content is remixed and improved - do we allow others to update our content in our system?
This is an important concept for educators - to what degree do we want our learners to retain the tools they already use? Should my content come to the learner's tool? I would think so...but it raises all types of concerns about copyright, ownership, control and so on. I imagine we will have a system designed that manages the the multi-laticed nature of content creation in different spaces well before we will have attended to our systemic concerns.
Content aggregation and identity does not require that we have a central model that we always bend to - we can have different identities in different spaces...and we may not wish to enable others to aggregate our content. A system should allow the option or the choice. But, to use my current favorite metaphor of educational change, we are at a point with technology, content, and learner identity that we need significant changes to our system. But it's like doing a bathroom renovation. We may only start by wanting a new mirror. Then we seen the drywall needs replacing. Then the sink. The bathtub. The flooring. The light fixtures. And once we're done with all that, we get dissatisfied with our kitchen or living room. Eventually, we commit to large scale renovations...or we start looking for a new home more in line with our needs and interests.
...oh, and then I tried out Send2Wiki - draw a button to your toolbar, and when browsing a website, you click the send2wiki button, and it will send the page to a wiki (you are then required to specify copyright permission, etc.). Once in a wiki, you can mess around with it. Quite cool.
Posted by gsiemens at March 16, 2007 01:03 PM | TrackBack