Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Wiki's hey? sounds sketchy....


Hello everyone!
On the 24th, In the Elluminate Live session, we talked about wiki's, while discussing the whole reliability factor. Considering anyone is able to edit a wiki page, how are we sure that this information is valid? Unfortunately, we are not! Ya that's right, there is information floating out there on the web that is unreliable and misleading.

I believe, however, that this issue stands true for all our recourses in life, and does not just start/end with the internet. Within the last month I read that Meg Ryan has died in a car crash, I have seen a teacher teach a music lesson and tell the student's the song was in 3/4 timing, and I heard a father tell his child the dog walking by was a bichon. Let's take a look at my sources: A journalist, a Teacher, and a Parent--all pretty reliable wouldn't you say?? Not only was this information gathered from sources other then the internet, but it was also all untrue.


My point is, we can not take everything at face-value. I believe that wiki's (such as wikipedia for example) can be an excellent resource if used in a critical manner. From a very young age we learn to analyze information and become critical thinkers, so why not apply the same skills to wiki's.

I came across an article in my RRS feed's, by Christopher Miller regarding the use of wikipedia in the classroom, and how we can use it as a teaching tool for students. The teacher developed an assignment that allowed the students to use wikkipidea as a source, by comparing it with other information. The main objective for this teacher was to "embrace Wikipedia instead of banning it, and use the experience as an educational experience" for the students.

I'm going to close with this for tonight.
Take Care--and GoodNight

2 comments:

DRS said...

I certainly feel like wikipedia is a great starting point for many topics and needs always to be viewed with a critical eye but we should do that with everything.

Interesting, driving today, we listened to the bridge collapse in Minneapolis and discovered that there already is a wikipedia entry on the topic with over 500 edits in less than 4 hours.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_Bridge

That's very cool

Brian said...

It's very true this is what we have to educate todays kids about. To take things in and then critically examine them. Good post Brian Nenson