2009/9/29 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
2009/9/29 Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se:
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. ;)