Michael Peel wrote:
Having said that, I've just looked at the original
document:
http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/files/2009-12-24-plagiarism-students.pdf
It actually does a pretty good job at giving advice on how to use
Wikipedia. It's just the Telegraph that chose the choice quote and
ignored the advice. ;-)
It even mentions the School's Wikipedia.
OK, I'm trying now to draft a press release by shoehorning it into the
"six sentence" format. This seems to work well enough as a way of seeing
what the "story" is.
Draft:
School students spend an increasing proportion of their free time
online, and will not be deterred from spending study time on the Web
also. Now Ofqual, the UK’s official examination regulation body, has
endorsed a guide “Using Sources” that is designed to help students using
the Web avoid the hazards, such as plagiarism and unreliable
information, by making proper use of sites such as Wikipedia, which
produces
schools-wikipedia.org and DVD selections especially for this
educational sector.
Wikimedia UK, the national organization representing the Wikipedia
reference site and other online resources, has responded by producing a
concise online document aimed at secondary school teachers. Mike Peel,
chair of WMUK, said “For all the adverse media comment and robust
debate, it is really important that students using Wikipedia understand
the correct way to work with this resource, and teachers can help them
to a more informed and critical way of using a site that they will all
know about and read anyway.”
The new guide is based on understanding how to look over a Wikipedia
page, examine warning notices and references, and follow up clues in the
history and discussion of a particular article. It is free content,
released under the GFDL license used for Wikipedia.
/draft
This isn't perfect, clearly. But is this on-message? Would this be what
WMUK wanted to say at this time? (NB that Ofqual did not write the guide
itself, but endorses what
plagiarismadvice.org wrote.)
Charles