Synergize Work For Effective Re-use/Refactoring

Students should learn to synergize their work across platforms (Blogging, Wiki, Social Bookmarking, Tagging, Music/Photo/Video Sharing, social networking sites, Podcasting, Video Blogging, email, message boards/virtual communities, etc). They should learn to use a blog and social bookmarking as an "outboard brain" and searchable personal knowledge base, they should learn how to transfer personal knowledge to a wiki,or wikis so that they can share and grow that knowledge. Students should learn when to use wiki instead of emailor other messaging (particularly when they want to share withmore than one recipient, or when planning or dicussion is becoming an ongoing back and forth exchange via email) One possible exercise is related to synergizing work across platforms (effective re-use) by importing blog posting and other original work into their wiki user pages for easier refactoring.

1. Have students import at least two blog postings into their user page on a wiki, or directly into a relavant wiki page comment or discussion area. The way that content is imported will depend on how the individual wiki itself is strucutured. Students should try it out in more than one wiki, or wiki community. This will teach students to learn how to recognize ways to synchronize their activities with the rules and culture of the wiki.
2. Students should then discuss and refactor (see: exercises in wiki participation) each other's imported content. More specifically:
• The student who imports his or her own blog content should also explain why it is relevant and either propose ways to refactor/incorporate it into the pages of the wiki, or actually go ahead and refactor/incorporate it, with an explanation as to why.
• The other student wiki participants should be required to get involved in all importing and refactoring activity for this exercise, either by participating in the refactoring, or by commenting about it.
3. This exercise should be repeated until the students first instinct when participating in a wiki is to see what they can find and draw from in their own personal knowledge base, and from other communities and wikis they participate in.

Example civic engagement exercise for highschool students:

This is an issue-based self-government and problem solving exercise. It involves students writing free-form on their user pages in a wiki, and then inviting comment, and then discussing and refactoring for use in actual wiki pages.

1. The teacher picks a topic that will be engaging to the students(eg. for highschool students: should schools monitor student use of myspace?) .
2. The students then go into a wiki, and on their own user pages, they write what ever they think about it (this can be imported or refactored content from a blog, or past work, if it is relevant and useable).
3. Students are then asked to rationally and civilly discuss and debate pros and cons of each other's individual work on these user pages. Students will borrow rules and social norms from other wiki communities, such as AssumeGoodFaith, UseRealNames, SoftSecurity, NPOV when applicable, etc It is preferable that students actually choose these rules that they will be governed by themselves. Although, the above examples of proven rules are a good template to let them choose from. The Community Standards debating and formation should happen in the wiki as well. Content Licenses of some type should also be chosen so as to avoid conflict about who owns what content and how it may or may not be reused.
4. Students are then shown how to turn parts of their work into actual pages about the different facets of the subject, and how to grow these pages. Each student would be required to create at least 2 new pages from whatever they have written in their initial work. Each student would also then be required to add a comment to at least 2 other non-user pages, and would be instructed on how to refactor their comments and discussion into content on the page itself.
5. All of the student wiki participants would then be tasked with creating one or more joint resolution/proposals about how they think they should be governed regarding this issue.
6. An instructive example: Campaigns Wikia on public education

This wiki exercise could become an integral part of ongoing student involvement in all student issues (sports, fundraisers, activities, educational programs, etc).

An civic engagement exercise for co-creating a meeting agenda in a wiki, co-creating meeting notes, and post-meeting co-discussion:

A wiki page can easily be a centralized place to co-create an agenda for any type of meeting. This exercise will teach students to build plans from the ground-up as a group, to refine those plans, and to use wiki plan-building to supplement and support face-to-face meeting and discussion. This use of a wiki can also compliment Chat: Channeling the Backchannel during meetings. Chat logs can be copied directly to the wiki, for instance. Individual blogging about meetings can also be refactored into the wiki pages. In this instance, the wiki serves as:

• An agenda co-creation tool.
• A group knowledge commons about meeting content, and an organically growing co-authored notebook to capture thoughts before, during, and after the meeting.

An example exercise:

1. Students are given 2 weeks or more to co-create and then vote on a meeting agenda and rules on a wiki page.
2. Students then hold a meeting based on this agenda, they are encouraged to take notes about the meeting to the wiki. Students are encouraged to use chat software and to copy chat logs to a page in the wiki, if desired (or simply to apply this exercise). Students are also encouraged to document the meeting with audio, images, or video if possible. These can be uploaded to, or linked to in the wiki.
3. Students should then continue asynchronous discussion after the meeting for at least one week, within the wiki and on their blogs. Students should make wiki pages for concepts that emerge from this discussion. Students should also refactor their blog content into wiki pages when relevant and possible.

The skills learned through this exercise can be re-applied to many civic engagement uses. Almost any meeting could be potentially supplemented both by wiki agenda and rule creation and discussion, and by incorporating other forms of participatory media.