Difference between revisions of "Pedagogy, Organizing and Wiki"

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: We believe that Wiki promotes critical thinking because it is a vastly different way of consuming media than most other forms. As you move through the wiki world, rather than being a passive consumer, you are always forced to make decision about whether or not you will change something. This series of small decisions creates more active participants and ultimately, hopefully, a more democratic space for the production of knowledge. It also breaks down the expert/student relationship. Most of the time, you will choose not to change things. But there is a tipping point, of which we are semi-conscious, where you absolutely must change something. This tipping point comes far earlier in Wiki than it does with other media because you are more confident that you can change it. When we criticize other media, it is post production, but with wiki you are always part of the process of production, even when you decide not to submit and edit. Indeed, criticism is embedded in the process of production itself. Wiki creates a visible feedback loop. It gives students as sense of how writing and thinking work—how they are constantly revised.
 
: We believe that Wiki promotes critical thinking because it is a vastly different way of consuming media than most other forms. As you move through the wiki world, rather than being a passive consumer, you are always forced to make decision about whether or not you will change something. This series of small decisions creates more active participants and ultimately, hopefully, a more democratic space for the production of knowledge. It also breaks down the expert/student relationship. Most of the time, you will choose not to change things. But there is a tipping point, of which we are semi-conscious, where you absolutely must change something. This tipping point comes far earlier in Wiki than it does with other media because you are more confident that you can change it. When we criticize other media, it is post production, but with wiki you are always part of the process of production, even when you decide not to submit and edit. Indeed, criticism is embedded in the process of production itself. Wiki creates a visible feedback loop. It gives students as sense of how writing and thinking work—how they are constantly revised.
  
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As wiki encourages users to evaluate things more consistently, it also pushes people to engage and change it, rather than just complaining about its inadequacies. It makes you see the consequences of your own actions. This is all an ideal tool for both organizing and pedagogy because the implicit lesson is that the status quo is changeable, and relatively easy to change. This can give users hope that change can be effective on a broader scale.
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: As wiki encourages users to evaluate things more consistently, it also pushes people to engage and change it, rather than just complaining about its inadequacies. It makes you see the consequences of your own actions. This is all an ideal tool for both organizing and pedagogy because the implicit lesson is that the status quo is changeable, and relatively easy to change. This can give users hope that change can be effective on a broader scale.
  
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We are also interested in the connections between this epistemology of wiki and the epistemologies of the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and John Dewey. We believe that this connection is productive for everyone for thinking about wiki, not just for scholars or academics.  
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: We are also interested in the connections between this epistemology of wiki and the epistemologies of the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and John Dewey. We believe that this connection is productive for everyone for thinking about wiki, not just for scholars or academics.  
  
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Nietzsche argues that what we call truth results from the social enterprise of making meaning in the world. We belive that wikis can and do function in a similar way. A given wiki community defines “the truth” on a given object of inquiry. This community often redefines this “truth.” Here is where Dewey comes in. Dewey holds that we can never reach an endpoint on an object of inquiry. It is always subject to more inquiry, the same way that knowledge on wikis can always be subject to further revision. For Dewey, this means that we never arrive at a final “truth.” In Nietzsche’s case, he thinks that we confuse the social process of “truth-making” with an objectively confirmable truth, something he thinks humans cannot access. So, while wikis, in my view, exhibit characteristics that resemble things described (anticipated?) by Dewey and Nietzsche, are those communities ready to embrace these contingent notions of truth? In philosophy classes, most undergraduates resist Nietzsche’s conception of truth because it feels so uncertain (and Nietzsche argued that it was uncertain). So, if we want to encourage this kind of thinking, how do we teach it as both organizers and classroom teachers?  
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: Nietzsche argues that what we call truth results from the social enterprise of making meaning in the world. We belive that wikis can and do function in a similar way. A given wiki community defines “the truth” on a given object of inquiry. This community often redefines this “truth.” Here is where Dewey comes in. Dewey holds that we can never reach an endpoint on an object of inquiry. It is always subject to more inquiry, the same way that knowledge on wikis can always be subject to further revision. For Dewey, this means that we never arrive at a final “truth.” In Nietzsche’s case, he thinks that we confuse the social process of “truth-making” with an objectively confirmable truth, something he thinks humans cannot access. So, while wikis, in my view, exhibit characteristics that resemble things described (anticipated?) by Dewey and Nietzsche, are those communities ready to embrace these contingent notions of truth? In philosophy classes, most undergraduates resist Nietzsche’s conception of truth because it feels so uncertain (and Nietzsche argued that it was uncertain). So, if we want to encourage this kind of thinking, how do we teach it as both organizers and classroom teachers?  
  
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Dewey’s idea of knowledge being continually subject to further inquiry connects to both organizing and teaching. Further, in Dewey’s view, action produces knowledge. Every time we take action, we produce new knowledge that we must evaluate. The new knowledge and evaluation feed into the next action we take which, in turn, produces more new knowledge. Again, though, no final knowledge is ever produced in this process. Are organizers willing to embrace the idea that we organize for a cause not because it is right in some transcendent sense but because given our evaluation at a given moment, organizing seems like the best action to take?  
+
: Dewey’s idea of knowledge being continually subject to further inquiry connects to both organizing and teaching. Further, in Dewey’s view, action produces knowledge. Every time we take action, we produce new knowledge that we must evaluate. The new knowledge and evaluation feed into the next action we take which, in turn, produces more new knowledge. Again, though, no final knowledge is ever produced in this process. Are organizers willing to embrace the idea that we organize for a cause not because it is right in some transcendent sense but because given our evaluation at a given moment, organizing seems like the best action to take?  
  
  

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Presentors: Mark Dilley, Karen Miller, Robert Vodicka

http://cyberchair.acm.org/oopslawikisym/submit/
http://www.wikisym.org/ws2007/

Submission Date: May 7, 2007 - end of day.

Workshop and Panel submissions will be reviewed and selected for their interest to the community. A submission should consist of two pages describing what you intend to do and how you meet this criterion. It should include a 100-word abstract and one-paragraph bios of all people relevant to the submission. Workshops will be allocated a half-day or a full-day and a room of their own (depending on your request). Panels will be given a 90 minutes time slot and a room of their own.

What does it mean to think in Wiki?

100 words:

This half day workshop will examine using Wiki as a tool in classrooms, to organize communities, and help us think through practical problems. The discussion will be based on a set of theoretical questions about the medium of wiki itself. Our guiding question: "What does it mean to think in Wiki?" is intended to evoke participants to think about Wiki as a new (or perhaps not-so-new) language which pushes users to develop specific ways of thinking about content and even truth, i.e., particular aspects of inquiry, thought, community and education. We contend that Wiki is a technological form that can contribute to shifts in how people understand themselves, how they understand knowledge, their social identities, and their relationships to structures of power. With this, we believe Wiki is a useful tool in the realms of pedagogy and organizing.

Proposal:

We believe that Wiki promotes critical thinking because it is a vastly different way of consuming media than most other forms. As you move through the wiki world, rather than being a passive consumer, you are always forced to make decision about whether or not you will change something. This series of small decisions creates more active participants and ultimately, hopefully, a more democratic space for the production of knowledge. It also breaks down the expert/student relationship. Most of the time, you will choose not to change things. But there is a tipping point, of which we are semi-conscious, where you absolutely must change something. This tipping point comes far earlier in Wiki than it does with other media because you are more confident that you can change it. When we criticize other media, it is post production, but with wiki you are always part of the process of production, even when you decide not to submit and edit. Indeed, criticism is embedded in the process of production itself. Wiki creates a visible feedback loop. It gives students as sense of how writing and thinking work—how they are constantly revised.
As wiki encourages users to evaluate things more consistently, it also pushes people to engage and change it, rather than just complaining about its inadequacies. It makes you see the consequences of your own actions. This is all an ideal tool for both organizing and pedagogy because the implicit lesson is that the status quo is changeable, and relatively easy to change. This can give users hope that change can be effective on a broader scale.
We are also interested in the connections between this epistemology of wiki and the epistemologies of the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and John Dewey. We believe that this connection is productive for everyone for thinking about wiki, not just for scholars or academics.
Nietzsche argues that what we call truth results from the social enterprise of making meaning in the world. We belive that wikis can and do function in a similar way. A given wiki community defines “the truth” on a given object of inquiry. This community often redefines this “truth.” Here is where Dewey comes in. Dewey holds that we can never reach an endpoint on an object of inquiry. It is always subject to more inquiry, the same way that knowledge on wikis can always be subject to further revision. For Dewey, this means that we never arrive at a final “truth.” In Nietzsche’s case, he thinks that we confuse the social process of “truth-making” with an objectively confirmable truth, something he thinks humans cannot access. So, while wikis, in my view, exhibit characteristics that resemble things described (anticipated?) by Dewey and Nietzsche, are those communities ready to embrace these contingent notions of truth? In philosophy classes, most undergraduates resist Nietzsche’s conception of truth because it feels so uncertain (and Nietzsche argued that it was uncertain). So, if we want to encourage this kind of thinking, how do we teach it as both organizers and classroom teachers?
Dewey’s idea of knowledge being continually subject to further inquiry connects to both organizing and teaching. Further, in Dewey’s view, action produces knowledge. Every time we take action, we produce new knowledge that we must evaluate. The new knowledge and evaluation feed into the next action we take which, in turn, produces more new knowledge. Again, though, no final knowledge is ever produced in this process. Are organizers willing to embrace the idea that we organize for a cause not because it is right in some transcendent sense but because given our evaluation at a given moment, organizing seems like the best action to take?



Mark Dilley bio:

Wiki walker since Jauary 2002. Communities include MeatballWiki, CommunityWiki and co-founded WikiIndex - which was based on several years of my work on SwitchWiki. I helped build the TourBus System and am the driver for the Eclectic Wiki Tour. My first WikiSym experience was with the WikiVanning folks in 2005 and in Denmark last year. I have attened and helped organize, in a small way, both RecentChangeCamp's in Portland, OR and am scheduled to be in Montreal, Canada for RoCoCo. I attended Wikimania last year in Boston, MA and hope to attend Wikimania in Taiwan. My interest is in self-organization which stems from union organizing and social justice work. Currently I am employed at AboutUs.org.

Karen Miller bio:

Assistant professor of history and urban studies at LaGuardia Community College, one of the City University of New York (CUNY) schools in Queens. I write about race and politics in Detroit in the 1920s and 1930s. I'm especially interested in the seemingly counter-intuitive relationship between the growth of liberalism over this period, and the sustenance of racial discrimination and stratification within Northern cities. I teach history, writing, urban studies, and women's studies classes. I like to use technology in the classroom, although I am averse to its overuse.

Robert Vodicka bio:

Ph. D. student in American Studies at the University of Kansas (KU). Dissertation on the beginnings of Actors’ Equity Association. M. A. thesis on Black Flag and the Los Angeles Police Department. Served as chair of negotiations committee for the Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition at KU. Organized Graduate employees at four other universities in the US besides KU. Worked for four and a half years as label manager of New Alliance Records. Has producer credit on recordings by the band, Nothing Painted Blue.


Robert's thoughts

Connection between epistemology of wiki and the epistemologies of Nietzsche and Dewey:

Nietzsche argues that what we call truth results from the social enterprise of making meaning in the world. I suggest that wikis can and do function in a similar way. A given wiki community defines “the truth” on a given object of inquiry. This community often redefines this “truth.” Here is where Dewey comes in. Through his “radical empiricism” (though I have renamed it “relentless empiricism), he holds that we can never reach an endpoint on an object of inquiry. It is always subject to more inquiry[nice point! k] the same way knowledge on wikis can and is always subject to further revision. For Dewey, this means that we never arrive at a final “truth.” In Nietzsche’s case, he thinks that we confuse the social process of “truth-making” with an objectively confirmable truth, something he thinks humans cannot access. From different directions, these thinkers arrive at contingent epistemologies, something I would suggest is fairly radical in the West in terms of how most people process information in their lives. So, while wikis, in my view, exhibit characteristics that resemble things described (anticipated?) by Dewey and Nietzsche, are those communities ready to embrace these contingent notions of truth? When I teach Nietzsche, most undergraduates resist this conception of truth, I think because it feels so uncertain (and Nietzsche argued that it was uncertain). So, if we want to encourage this kind of thinking, how do we teach it? [Robert, this is GREAT stuff!! -k]

Dewey’s idea of knowledge being continually subject to further inquiry connects to organizing. As I have learned organizing, to be successful, we have to set goals and evaluate them continuously (there are also organizing studies that support this). What we think we know about a given organizing project always remains subject to what we learn from those ongoing evaluations. Further, in Dewey’s view, action produces knowledge. Every time we take action, we produce new knowledge that we must evaluate. The new knowledge and evaluation feed into the next action we take which, in turn, produces more new knowledge (there is a parallel here to Robn Kelley’s argument about social movements producing knowledge and theory). Again, though, no final knowledge is ever produced in this process. Are organizers willing to embrace the idea that we organize for a cause not because it is right in some transcendent sense but because given our evaluation at a given moment, organizing seems like the best action to take? Most organizers I know have a difficult time with this, sometimes personally, sometimes because they don’t think they can organize other people with this contingent foundation and sometimes a combination of both. So, how do we train organizers?

Interesting points here, although I would take it in a different direction--it seems that one of the tricks of organizing, like teaching, is to convince people to believe that truth is situated and socially produced--so that they can more easily question and approach critically the bullshit they get from popular culture/structures of power designed to convince them they are peons and have no power. i really like this idea of "contingent truth" and the idea that truth is socially produced, i.e. what you said above about Nietzsche--"we confuse the social process of “truth-making” with an objectively confirmable truth." That's part of what capital relies on, that we are easy to confuse into believing that their truth is objective and thus true and our truths are contingent and thus untrue.

Not connected to the above, good organizing and teaching practices suggest asking and listening as opposed to telling. How do we cultivate this in both organizers and teachers?

What would happen if we evaluated academic work (service, teaching and research) on criteria developed form organizing principles? (I have a lot more on this)

Brainstorming

Overstatment: Wiki is a technological form that shifts and actually changes how people understand themselves and their social identities.

We think that it promotes a way of critical thinking in wasys that you are

as you move throw the wiki world, ratehre that n being a passive consumer you are forced to make decisison.. you always know that you can change things.

You are always deciding whether or not you are goign to change things, the whole process is more clear to you. You will choose not to change things most of the time. There is a tipping point where you will change something. That is differnt because it is way different than all medias.

When we criticize other media, it is post production. With wiki you are always in process of production. Versions are great, criticism is embedded in the production itself.

What is the relationship between subjectivity between the individual and the technology of wiki

Cultivates a new sensibility

See your effects immediately.. really encourages critical thinking. Encouarages you to evaluate things. Instead of just complaining, you can engage it and change it. Makes you see the consquences of your own actions. This is all ideal, because the status quo is easier to change which can give hope that change can be affective more broadly.

It is a language of hypertext -

Low barriers to entry.

  • Face to Face very important
  • Technology doesn't constitute subjectivity.
  • Technology is just one more tool people can use to create the world they want

It felt good to be making real connections online.

1 – sociological – how do new technologies help produce community, how do people use them, why are people allergic to them.

2 – philosophical – how does being on wiki actually change how someone affects, behavior (real names) – how does it make user thinking about community.

Both interested in theoretical, epistemology – but heavily interested how it operates in real life.

Interlocking for me, there is difference between forums and wiki. How is wiki different then other technologies. How does it create a different kind of world citizen?

Another is that real names is crucial to …..building trust online, especially in wiki. Another is that providing for anonymity is important. Another is pseudonyms are destructive.

  • EmergentDemocracy – not taking a poll – even if it is ConsensusPolling – Democracy is ActionBased. LiquidDemocracy

Wiki is about people, people, and people. That is why it is such an important technology. (use opt out example)


  • Organizing using the internet, specifically wiki, as an ethos.
    • Self-organization: the spontaneous emergence of global coherence out of local interactions.
    • Self organizing nature of the simple technology of wiki, challenges top down or expert model. Allows for average person to get their hands dirty, with minimal intro. I think that people will come to it from fresh off the internet. Folks who are on the internet will continue to use their familiar tools.
    • Importance of f2f interaction, including phone to establish some emotional basis for the continued internet interactions.
    • use debate on communicate or die. While using f2f how do use technology that don’t dismiss the importance of f2f – how does f2f contact help shape, not trying to use to replace, enhance after trust is built, recognize tech never replace live contact. Myth that new technology will make traditional ways of communicating obsolete, tech is being used reduce human contact, but not changing the fundamental need of people who need, it is used to speed up workers, it is not a revolution of information, it is another way to control people. Myth is changing ideas
    • Distributive Action Research
    • OneStopSign town.. turn into Metropolis of SelfOrganized Knowledge
  • RealNames – allows for anonymous input, but being connected that is not anonymity.
  • Brainstorm Community, PortlandPatternRepository, MeatballWiki, CommunityWiki
  • Psudonyms, damaging
  • Wikipedia
  • Rumsfeld and his CEO – using business tactics to organize military right now. People imagine that technology shapes consciousness. He is business vision of tech, I have people vision, want to help shape technology in that vision
  • Ideas of tech we have through pop culture are mostly about ruling class ideas, which are
  • Scale is fundamental to technology. Geographers / philosopher. Technology – the way that wiki scales – one wiki – all wiki –still are all sitting on your ass in front of the computer screen.

Research



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