Anthony wrote:
On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 5:14 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I have had a number of excellent deep discussions with high school, college, grade school teachers about Wikipedia and the ones who pay more attention than "Someone copied the Wikipedia entry as an essay" generally have a more nuanced and productive view of things. They are aware we aren't a primary source, and the risks of any secondary source... Such as Britannica and World Book, too.
One would think from these discussions you might have learned that Wikipedia, Britannica, and World Book are tertiary sources.
What is accomplished by trying to label encyclopedias as tertiary sources? They probably are, but so what?
My wife is a high school teacher, but she doesn't really pay more attention than "Someone copied the Wikipedia entry for their homework". You'd think as a Calculus teacher she wouldn't run into that very often, but actually it happens all the time.
I hope that she makes sure that they give Wikipedia proper credit. It seems like a great teaching moment for her. More interesting for us would be why these kids use Wikipedia. Are the authorized proprietary textbooks that bad?
Ec