Contrails of Learning: Using New Technologies for Vertical Knowledge-building

New opportunities with Web2.0 technologies and Constructivism theory in culturally diverse classrooms

“…And they also can provide the answer to meeting the needs of today's diverse students/learners by enhancing their learning experience through personalization and rich opportunities for networking and collaboration. A study was conducted by Anson and Miller-Cochran (2009) found that students were hesitant to take the lead in the class and that the facilitator needed to either choose to guide the process or find a way to ensure the students that the tools created are there for everyone to edit. Use of web 2.0 tools can supply to constructivist environment not only the participation but also the collaboration and interactivity.…”

“…Use of web 2.0 tools can supply to constructivist environment not only the participation but also the collaboration and interactivity. For collaborative Web 2.0 tools to become a seamless way to share information, the students must be convinced the tools are used to enhance collaboration for building knowledge or facilitating learning that can take place over space and time and not as something that challenges the authority of the instructor (Anson & Miller-Cochran, 2009).…”

Meeting Students Where They Are: Advancing a Theory and Practice of Archives in the Classroom

“…In other words, what might this actually look like in the context of a technical communication course? In "Contrails of Learning," Chris Anson and Susan Miller-Cochran [24] provide one model. In order to facilitate the construction of collective memory for one of their graduate program's courses, they set up a wiki to serve as both a resource (i.e., repository of bibliographic information) and a performative space (i.e., a place where their students could articulate their class projects).…”

Infrastructure and Wiki Pedagogy: A Multi-Case Study

“…One of the most salient contributions to this scholarship was Mark's Phillipson's (2008) taxonomy of wikis in the classroom because this work helped to map other contributions. For example, there were studies examining what Phillipson identified as resource wikis, which traditionally served as collections of information (Anson & Miller-Cochran, 2009;McCorkle, 2008) In addition, there were studies examining what Phillipson identified as presentation wikis, which primarily supported the work of a course (Carr, Morrison, Cox, & Deacon, 2007;Fernheimer et al, 2009;Martin & Dusenberry, 2008;Walsh, 2010). Beyond these case studies of wikis, other scholars have employed Wikipedia as a situated writing context to teach students about audience and contributing original information to existing discourse communities (Caeton, 2008;Cummings, 2009;Vetter, 2013).…”