Reflection of Profile wiki

Whilst creating my profile wiki I did not consider the learning benefits of taking part in the activity and thought it was simply an introduction for others to see a little bit about myself before the course started. I didn’t look at other profiles in depth I have to admit and didn’t give it much thought until now. Probably due to stressing about working and studying at the beginning!

Whilst reflecting on the activity, I come to realise that it helped a create connections as a few others from Mackay contacted me after reading my profile. I felt that being at the residential school was where I developed connections amongst students similar in personality to myself when face to face.  This could have been another reason why I didn’t fully take part in looking at others.

After reading the profile wikis now, I am slightly more at ease with this course as many others wrote about having limited knowledge of ICT, a similar position to myself.

I feel that this activity is a great opportunity to connect the students within a classroom as an introduction. The strategy itself can support subject specific learning, it can give students an overview of individual classmate’s thoughts and ideas that they can relate to. It can aid in their selection of pairing for activities that involve group work. Overall it can support their learning by giving the teacher an insight into their thoughts, ideas and basic knowledge of a subject.

There are numerous learning theories that are visible in this activity. There are elements of constructivism as it uses a student’s knowledge and prior experiences. Answering questions about oneself as well as learning about others. However I do believe that it leans more to so ‘Cognitivism’. The questions and answers set out as a database for all to see means fellow students can gather selective information of interest and store in long term memory to use later on in the course; for example to find a suitable partner for the learning theories wiki. The learning theory ‘Connectivism’ is shown as the activity creates connections between students to instigate future shared learning.

The profile wiki activity supports a range of students though is catered more for the visual/special learning style.

I believe the design of this activity supports learning as it is a digital form of connecting and a way to learn about one another. This design can support other learning activities well in a classroom.