Tomorrow I'm in Bristol on the invitation of the JISC to present two papers reporting on recent research we have been doing on social software at their regional support centre conference.

One of my papers will detail my wiki activities 5 stage model. I have tried to develop a model which describes how students are gradually drawn into deeper cognitive engagement with learning whilst at the same time they are gradually developing their collaborative strengths. There has already been some interest in my model (see for example WebSphere Geek) and I anticipate and welcome discussion about its merits and limitations. See the wiki activities page of one online group for an example here.

The model starts with Exploration (where students are finding out about their new learning environment, discovering the do's and dont's and generally orientating themselves on the wiki). Next comes Exhibition - where they are encouraged to talk about themselves, to show and tell best practice and to reflect on their experiences. They are also asked to perform tasks such as 'Mining for Gold' - finding useful websites, online resources etc, that they can share with the group as 'gold dust resources'. Third comes Explanation - here they describe in deeper terms their ideas and provide other group members with more detail. They may for example, elaborate on why their 'gold dust resources' are so useful. Fourth, there is Elaboration - here students start to edit each other's postings and append arguments or discussions with counter arguments. They may expand upon their resources, or annotate each other's postings. Finally, Evaluation is where students place a value on the validity, reliability and relevance of their work. They judge the significance of their collaborative fruits and decide where they will go next in their learning journey.

It's no co-incidence that all the stages begin with an 'E' - not only is it easier to remember, but the more we can exploit the 'e' in e-learning, the better, in my opinion....
Posted by Steve Wheeler from Learning with e's
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Labels: 5 Stage Wiki Activities Model online learning wikis
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  1. That's a very relevant and intuitive framework! It certainly ties in with my wiki experiences in the classroom, although not in such a structured manner. I was trying to find out more information about your 5 stage model, but I could not find the resources. Is there a working paper I can read? Thanks!

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  2. Thanks for the positive comments - I will be presenting in more depth on this model at ALT-C in Leeds this September. I am also in the process of writing a chapter which will be published in an edited volume in the autumn. I'm also currently analysing data from a study which will result in a journal article (n=237). Hope this helps.

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  3. Thanks for the reply. Looking forward to reading your work as I'm also investigating wikis for collaborative learning but looking at it more from a technological viewpoint. I really agree that the process of collaborating with the wiki needs some fine tuning.

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If you've read this blog previously you'll know that I'm both a poet and a computer scientist. Recently I have been researching the alleged capability of OpenAI's ChatGPT to write poetry. Some have expressed concerns that AI will soon replace poets, artists, musicians and other creatives. So I thought I would perform a little experiment. Here's a challenge for you: A sort of poetry Turing Test if you will. Can you tell the difference between a computer generated poem and one written by a human being? 

Earlier today I asked ChatGPT to write a Pantoum about love. I also wrote a Pantoum, based on the same rules of the fixed form poem. Both are below. But which one is the AI generated poem... and which is mine? I welcome all of your comments.

An old friend and acquaintance of mine from my years in academia recently published a new book. The book is Story Machines, by Mike Sharples. It's one that fascinates me because it combines two of the key interests in my life - technology and story telling. I have been involved in educational technology since 1979, and still teach and speak about my research in the area even today. But I have also, as those of you who follow this blog, grown back into my roots as a performance poet and writer.

This is Steve Wheeler at his creative lunatic best. If the crazy cover doesn't convince you, then read on.... He claims that this collection of poetry has been twenty-five years in the making. Although all of the poems are new, the concept goes back to 1995.

This is extreme poetry. Not for the nervous. This book cost me most of my best poems. I was saving them for a rainy day, and guess what? It rained for two weeks without a break. So here it is: My grand opus: You better enjoy it.... I'll be watching.

It has been quite a while since I last posted anything on this blog. I guess it's the same for many folk right now, what with all that's been going on in the world. It's probable that many have written much less because of lockdowns, wars and rumours of wars. But for me, it has been the opposite. I have been writing. I just haven't been writing academic material.

I just posted a recording of one of my new poems to YouTube. Yasmina is about the friendship between a young Syrian boy and a farmyard hen. It's a bitter-sweet story, and I hope to enjoy it. The poem is taken from my new collection of short stories and poems titled Small Lights Burning. You can check it out and purchase a copy on either Kindle or in paperback via Amazon.
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Over the years, I have written a substantial collection of poems about childhood, growing up and being young (because I was young myself once ... no, really). It was difficult to narrow down this stack of poems to just 50, but I managed to do it, and they have now been published in a new book called Small Lights Burning. The book also features several short stories - all about children and their imagination.
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I'm very pleased with the new cover for the second edition of Urban Voices. I have added several new poems to the collection and revised some of the illustrations, so I thought a makeover of the front cover might also be in order.

I selected this photo from a series of four I took one rainy late evening as I was walking through Piccadilly Circus  in London.

A Happy New Year to you (it really has to be better than 2020)! Last month, just before Christmas I recorded a podcast interview with Mark Nichols (formerly of the British Open University and now back working in New Zealand as Executive Director of the Open Polytechnic) for his series titled: Leaders and Legends of Online Learning. Now, I'm flattered to think that someone might think of me as a 'legend' but it was great fun to talk about my greatest passion in life: learning.
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It has been quite a while since I last posted on this blog, but a lot has happened, including my falling ill with a virus infection. I tested positive for Covid-19 and then spent just over a month slowly recovering, but I'm now hopefully on the mend. I did hear a young lad not so long back ask his Mum if she'd had to live through the previous 18 Covid outbreaks. Perish the thought. 

Yesterday was a great first session of Online Educa Berlin's virtual event.
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Recent publications
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  • Wheeler S (2015) Learning with 'e's: Educational Theory and Practice in the Digital Age. Carmarthen: Crown House
  • Kitching L and Wheeler S (2013) Playing Games: Do Games Consoles have a Positive Impact on Girls’ Learning Outcomes and Motivation? [Full Text] European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, EDEN 2013/1.
  • Sangra A and Wheeler S (2013) New Informal Ways of Learning: Or are we Formalising the Informal? [Full Text] In Informalisation of Education, Universities and Knowledge Society Journal (RUSC), 10 (1), 286-293. Open University of Catalonia.
  • Wheeler S (2012) Digital literacies for engagement in emerging online cultures, [Full Text] eLC Research Paper Series, 5 (1), 14-25.
  • Wheeler S (2011) Teacher resistance to new technologies: How barriers to Web Enhanced Learning can be overcome. In G. Trentin and M. Repetto (Eds) Faculty Training for Web Enhanced Learning. New York, NY: Nova Science.
  • Reinhardt W, Wheeler S and Ebner M (2010) All I need to know about Twitter I learned in Kindergarten. In N Reynolds and M Turcsanyi-Szabo (Eds.) Key Competencies in the Knowledge Society. Berlin: Springer.
  • Ebner M, Muhlberger H, Schaffert S, Schiefner M, Reinhardt W and Wheeler S (2010) Getting Granular on Twitter: Tweets from a Conference and their limited usefulness for Non-Participants. In N Reynolds and M Turcsanyi-Szabo (Eds.) Key Competencies in the Knowledge Society. Berlin: Springer.
  • Wheeler S (2010) Using Wikis in Teacher Education: Student generated content as support in professional learning. In MJW Lee and C McLoughlin (Eds.) Web 2. 0-Based E-Learning: Applying Social Informatics for Tertiary Teaching. Hershey, PA: IGI Global Press.
  • Wheeler S and Lambert-Heggs W (2010) Connecting Distance Learners and Their Mentors Using Blogs: The MentorBlog Project. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 10 (4), 323-331.
  • Kamel Boulos MN, Sanfilippo AP, Corley CD and Wheeler S (2010) Social Web mining and exploitation for serious applications: Technosocial Predictive Analytics and related technologies for public health, environmental and national security surveillance. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine. doi:10.1016/j.cmpb.2010.02.007
  • Wheeler S (2010) Open Content, Open Learning: Using blogs and wikis in higher education. In U-D Ehlers and D Schneckenberg (Eds) Changing Cultures in Higher Education. Berlin: Springer-Verlag
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With the Nyanga Township kids, Cape Town (look! it's a digital camera!)
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