Jimmy Says Wikipedia Good… Teachers Bad
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia says that teachers who don’t let students use Wikipedia are “bad educators”. He says that new editing and checking procedures have made Wikipedia more trustworthy.
Try to edit the article for Hillary Clinton. The edit tab has been removed. Notice the lock in the top-right corner of the article. To modify this particular resource, you must first login. This is one of the measures that has been incorporated to protect articles from vandalism.
I think there are two valuable components to Wikipedia. One is the shear volume of information. The second is the external references to supporting information. The combination almost guarantees something about almost any topic with a link to an authoritative site.
One of the 21st century skills that our students need is to be able to determine what is authoritative and what is not. Wikipedia is the perfect place to develop this skill.
December 8th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
I believe Jimmy Wales is correct. Teachers should “teach” their students how to research and to evaluate your sources of information. Just because it is on the Internet, does not mean it is true. One instance of this is that ESPN.com reported that LSU football coach Les Miles had accepted the head coaching job at Michigan. This information was false and Coach Miles had to call a meeting with his players and then call a press conference to set the record straight. Teachers need to share all of the resources with their students and then teach them how to assemble all of the information they have acquired. I was working on a computer in our high school library one day and watched a student next to me using Wikipedia to lookup answers on a worksheet. I spent 10 minutes installing some software and she was done before I was. Teachers have to realize that our students are very smart. They will find the simplest and quickest way to get something done.