Isabell Long wrote:
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