4
August
2006
August
2006
A New Wiki World?2
What can be said for an encyclopedia that is sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and sometimes illiterate? writes Stacy Schiff in The New Yorker last week. A student sent in this article, which is a long exploration of wikipedia at
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact
Take a look and let us know what you think.
I had a lot of problems with WIKIs at the beginning of last school year. I had problems with the openess of Wikipedia. It helped when my boss changed the entry for Alaska to have the capital of Alaska be Anchorage. The information was corrected within 60 seconds. Whether we like wikis or not, we have a professional responsibility to understand wikis and blogs.
Sue,
An ed. tech and I had a friendly conversation about wikis. He defended them saying that wikis are constantly being corrected and that ‘blatantly’ and not so blatantly incorrect information will always be corrected ‘very fast’. My only comment to this was, “Yes, but will that be before OR after your student has visited the site and gathered resources?
It’s a good tool, but I really wouldn’t call it authoritative or the end of the line in researching.
Just my two cents.
Wendy