Summer 2012 Hackjam: The Wiki

Rebecca Itow and Dan Hickey

In the Fall 2011, we decided to put on a Hackjam in conjunction with the Monroe County Public Library. We adapted the curriculum outlined in the Hacktivity Kit to fit our needs, and partnered with ForAllSystems to implement a badging system for the event. You can read an earlier post giving an overall account of the event here.  We were particularly interested in aligning the hackjam with a Common Core English standard on multimodal writing.  We also wanted to make sure that all of the hackers learned how to discuss coding and writing for the web in networked spaces.  This was where they would want to go for help in the future.

Why Use a Wiki?

In adapting and designing the curriculum, it became readily apparent that, if we were going to have the participants hacking pages and reflecting on their learning, they would need a central place to do this. We began thinking that the best space would be a wiki because it is meant to be edited by multiple users, but each page can be customized to individual participants’ personality and needs. Rebecca had used Wikispaces with her 9^th and 11^th grade English students successfully in the past. Her experience in her own classroom combined with her participation in Dan’s online classes where they used “wikifolios” to house work and promote discussion convinced us that wikis were the right space for the type of engagement we wanted to foster.

Rebecca made a simple wiki on wikispaces, using the homepage as the place to access general information such as links to tools and websites that would be used throughout the Hackjam.

 
How Did We Structure Our Wiki?

Rebecca structured the wiki by making an internal page for the Summer 2012 Hackjam and, using a widget, created a simple way for new users to create new and easily accessible personal wikipages.

Rebecca also created internal pages as resources for the hackers to access as needed. This included html and CSS cheat sheets, and a description of the badges and badge requirements.

How Did Hackjammers Use the Wiki?

Our goals were modest, but most participants used the wiki as we intended and some went beyond.  Some participants customized their pages to fit their personalities, while others made only a simple page on which they posted their hacks and character profile.

Within each personal page, hackers posted reflections on their learning and thoughts on each

other’s work in the form of comments. While this is a section of the wiki that was not as widely used as we had hoped, it has the potential to thread conversations and track the learning and thought processes of the young hackers.

We will do a separate post that talks about the reflections, as there is quite a bit to discuss.  But Thalia’s reflection on her Composer’s badge (the new one we added getting at multimodal writing) suggests that adding the wiki enhanced the hackjam experience:

What Did Overall Usage Look Like?

Overall, the use of the wiki to post hacks and reflections was quite successful. Participants were able to easily access the resources, their own wiki pages, and their peers’ wikis and hacks. Mentors were able to easily access the hackers’ work and reflections, which allowed them to provide immediate verbal feedback and rewards for their work in the form of badges. Even though the Hackjam is over, both participants and mentors can still access the site for further review and comments, as can others who would like to see the work that was done at the event.

Given our obsession with getting young people to write and then revise and discuss their writing, we were quite pleased to see the amount of writing that took place on the wiki.  At some points during the hackjam, the room was silent but for the clicking of 20+ keyboards, punctuated by muffled chuckles as hackers read each other’s hacks or comments.

During the five hour activity, hackers wrote over 21,000 words on the wiki, or an average of 880 per hacker, going as high as 2,400.  They posted a total of 108 comments, averaging 4 per hacker, and going as high as 10.  Perhaps most importantly, some of the writing clearly reflected a sense that students were writing things for peers to read. 

What Will We Do in the Future?

In future Hackjams we intend to streamline the wiki usage even more, and foster more conversation in the threaded comments. We also intend to explain and refine the reflection prompts and process; the hackers wrote excellent reflections for the amount of support that was provided for them, but we can do more to make the reflections more meaningful for the hackers. We are looking forward to making these refinements and to implementing them in the next Hackjam.