I think we should distinguish between two things in this current debate. This posting deals with the first.
One issue centres around Wikipedia. A number of the education departments and individual schools have banned wikipedia for a variety of reasons. Teachers have expressed concern over the authoritativeness of its content and the fact that supposedly ‘anyone’ can contribute. These knee-jerk reactions tend to ignore the fact that increasingly Wikipedia has put in place a set of checks and balances designed to reduce mis-information and editorial mistakes. These are described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About and in appended pages.
The importance of a collaborative project like Wikipedia is surely the depth of up-to-date information that it can provide. Sure some of the information will date as time goes on, and we need to assess the content in exactly the same way that we assess any other information. Students have to be taught that straight copying is plagiarism (but we do that with websites anyway). Have you had a look at when your current text book was printed? Add 2 years onto the publishing date to allow for writing, editing etc. and you get some idea of how out of date the content could be. It was written by 3 people? How reliable are they? Do they make mistakes?
The importance of wikipedia also lies in the collaboration. More about this aspect of wikis tomorrow.
You have a chance to hear about wikipedia from its founder Jimmy Wales through the educationau seminar series in April and to debate some of the issues related to its availability in your institution.
Seminar promo:
Wikipedia is the 13th most visited website in the world and the 10th in Australia – AND Jimmy Wales the man behind Wikipedia is coming to Australia.
education.au is excited to announce that Jimmy Wales is the keynote speaker for the first of its 2007 Seminar Series. The seminar will be held in four locations; Adelaide, Perth, Sydney and Melbourne beginning the week of April 23.
To register for the seminar go to: https://secure.educationau.edu.au or
For further details go to: www.educationau.edu.au/seminar/challenging
More tomorrow on wikis - have you got any good places to recommend. Leave a comment
3 Comments
Wiki’s are one of the best innovations in education since the invention of the chalkboard. They are inexpensive, easy to use and a great way of assisting us to think about how we structure and present content.
Yes, there is some rubbish in Wikipedia, but the fact that there are more editors (that is critical readers), than authors, means that quality is maintained.
We use a Wiki (Media Wiki) at work. All important stuff to run the business ends up on the Wiki. And because it is so easy to add stuff and find stuff, people are happy to use it.
From an educational administration point of view a Wiki would work well. Just imagine the sort of material it could contain. Homework, assignment due dates, samples of excellent student work, contact details, time tables, the list goes on and on.
Yes wikis are great to have on a class site. We encourage all our teachers to have a class wiki or 3 or 4 of them going at once. Teachers can set homework and kids can use their VPN to access from home. It is so great to have such intractive website.
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