2009/9/29 Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se>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.