How many times have we been told to never cite Wikipedia in
a research paper while we were in school?
This started in high school, if not middle school for me. But I’m a pro-Wikipedia user. I understand where teachers are coming from
when they say not to directly cite Wikipedia due to the fact that its platform
is based off of the contributions of others, but I once had a teacher who I
think thought along the same lines as I do regarding this website. He said, “I don’t want to see Wikipedia as a
main citation on your papers, but you can use it as a starting point to get your research ideas flowing.” Now, I agree that there are a few caveats to
this statement. What if the students
just cite the references on Wikipedia without doing further research? What if they take everything on there to be
true and only look at the topic from that point of view? Wikipedia and its usage in academia needs to
be addressed from an early age since I think it really plays into this idea
about skepticism we discussed in class yesterday.
I find Wikipedia to be a great starting point for any random
thing I don’t know really anything about: literary theory, random battles in
major wars, atomic particles and the like (I’m open to exploring other pages if
you have suggestions!). However, I was eventually
taught that I should actually click on those references at the bottom and see
the sites they take me to. Sometimes
they prove to be another springboard for even further research and then other
times I’m disappointed at the lack of actual information presented. Students should be intrigued by the
information they read on Wikipedia as a means to delve further into more
“academically-approved” research outlets.
Obviously, teachers might want to tread the water carefully or else
their students might just use Wikipedia for everything, but I think this would
be a great teaching opportunity for teachers to explain that skepticism is
important when doing online research. We as teachers need to open the right doors for our students so they can understand the content on the web and to become more critical users of information from all sources. Students shouldn’t take everything they read online as fact, and should
do more in depth analysis of what webpages and articles they’re actually
looking at. We as teachers in this technological world should set examples of what proper Internet research is and implement it within our teaching practice; a possible teaching assignment could be to analyze and correct a Wikipedia article, so that other users are provided more accurate pages. We might not remember how we learned about things on the Internet but now we're in a position to impart our learned knowledge to our future students.
Hi Kelsey,
ReplyDeleteI think it is awesome how you connected the concept about students needing to be skeptical of things that they are researching on the internet using the example of Wikipedia. Your example is something I think most of us have heard from teachers before! In one of my undergraduate courses I actually did the assignment that you mentioned "to analyze and correct a Wikipedia article, so that other users are provided more accurate pages." With group members I had to research and edit a Wikipedia page. It was a great learning experience in that together through researching of multiple resources, we found contradictory information that made us delve deeper in our research to make sure our facts were straight. We also added in some more details that may have been missing. Not only did I learn a lot about my topic but I was able to feel accomplished about the research and the conclusions that my group had settled on. It actually provided an even greater learning experience for our group about publishing things on the web as when we posted our edits, they weren't showing up. We learned that the particular Wikipedia site that we had been assigned was managed by an organization so they were in full control of what was being posted, so our stuff we being reviewed and we would of had to obtain special permission to post what we had written. Overall, the project was good exposure to the world of online research and the way research on the internet worked. I think that implementing something like this in our future classrooms would be a great way to incorporate technology and learning about subject matter together!
Kelsey,
ReplyDeleteFirst off, terrific video.
Secondly, looks like you had quite the experience in Georgia. My advice: leverage that to the max with your students.
As for the Wikipedia issue, I think you've got the right approach, and for those kids who just use the citations at the bottom--they're going to find a way to cheat the system regardless. Eventually they'll realize that they're cheating themselves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Sincerity
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstructivism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(philosophy)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_McLaren
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Young_(poet)
Kelsey! Hi again! I agree with your viewpoint on Wikipedia on using it as a starting point or just to look up the general information about some subject we're just curious about. I remember I had a math professor who would always emphasize how amazing it was and told us to always reference it when we were confused about something, though I wasn't sure if I 100% agreed with his suggestion. Whenever searching for a topic on Google, I always end up clicking on the Wikipedia article first to get a general picture, and then if I want to gain a deeper understanding, I'll start looking for information from more credible sources. I also really liked your idea on having students read and analyze the accuracy of a Wikipedia article. This would definitely be an effective method of conveying the fact that not all information on the internet is comprehensive or completely reliable. It is really important that we teach students to have some skepticism on the reliability of sources and to be critical of all ideas so that they can decide if they should trust a source or not.
ReplyDelete