2009/9/29 Thomas Dalton:
2009/9/29 Lars Aronsson:
This weekend I learned about the phrase
"Wikipedia education".
Apparently it is used in Swedish ("Wikipedia-undervisning") to
describe the kind of teacher-less lessons where school kids are
left to "research" a topic on their own. Typically they google and
find facts in Wikipedia, which they copy to their papers. The
phrase does not say anything about Wikipedia in itself, but
describes an irresponsible attitude from some teachers. The sad
effect is that Wikipedia's name is associated with something bad.
How could we turn this around, so Wikipedia is associated with
serious knowledge and good education?
What you describe isn't necessarily a bad thing. Independent learning
and research is a very important part of education. It all comes down
to the details of how it is done.
I agree. Some of my teachers have set homework tasks and just said
'copy/paste from Wikipedia if you want, I don't care as long as it is
done', others have said the complete opposite - 'don't use Wikipedia,
it's bad and unreliable'. I have been wanting correct those teachers
who have said it is wrong in pointing out some of the main policies
concerning reliability of content and sources, but I haven't had the
chance yet. I do think it's shocking though, the divide. I haven't
yet mentioned I contribute to Wikipedia, I did in my last school and
they didn't really care. ;)
The biggest danger with the attitude of some teachers is that encourages
plagiarism. I see nothing in what these teachers say to encourage
giving credit to Wikipedia, not to mention the individual contributors
to an article. For some students, who find any kind of writing too
difficult and from whom any written output at all is a major triumph, it
may not matter since they will never write anything else once they
leave school. Some others, looking for an easy way to complete an
assignment, may use Wikipedia even when they are told not to, and will
fail to give a proper source to avoid criticism for using it.
Ec