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?
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.
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. ;)
On Tuesday 29 September 2009, Isabell Long wrote:
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',
That's surprising to me as I've not yet heard such a statement, but I suppose some might say it. (Is this in college/university?)
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
Thomas Dalton wrote:
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.
Independent learning (when done right) can be useful and important. But that's not how Wikipedia's name is being used here. Those who like independent learning have their own names for it.
Those who call it "Wikipedia education" are the teachers, politicians and newspaper editors who dislike it (or how the method is being abused to reduce costs for teacher salaries). And that's where their abuse of our name becomes our problem.
If I understood well, Lars has written that _making_ publicly connections between Wikipedia and bad habits around its usage, is bad for Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a powerful tool. And as every powerful tool, it can be used in a good or bad way. We should clearly point out what are those good and bad habits, strongly encourage the good ones and even stronglier discourage the bad ones. This should be a part of Wikipedia's "marketing strategy". I hope such a clear position and strategy would help to stop making connections I wrote about above.
I know wikipedians already do something like this. However, according to Lars' report, it seems we (or at least Swedish wikipedians) don't do enough.
We shouldn't create only the best encyclopedia but also create and propagate instructions how to use it, in order to stop the bad habits. But we should in the first place understand why the connections are bad for Wikipedia.
We _are_ partially responsible how our tool is used.
Jiri
On Wednesday, 30. September 2009 0:33:01 Lars Aronsson wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
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.
Independent learning (when done right) can be useful and important. But that's not how Wikipedia's name is being used here. Those who like independent learning have their own names for it.
Those who call it "Wikipedia education" are the teachers, politicians and newspaper editors who dislike it (or how the method is being abused to reduce costs for teacher salaries). And that's where their abuse of our name becomes our problem.
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
I am afraid that a connection between Wikipedia and bad habits is more spread than we can think of. I notice this in many Latin American countries where I consult; mostly in universities where teachers discourage its use mainly for two reasons: (a) afraid of copy and paste (they don't have the time to check if this is happening, they just assume it), and (b) they think that Wikipedia information is not reliable enough. Both, but specially the last one should prompt an aggressive "marketing strategy", as Jiri suggests. By all means, proper use as a learning tool should be encourage by teachers, scholars and intellectuals, which is not Wikipedia's mission. But a clear and noticeable note in Wikipedia's main page may help to change this view. Rodolfo
Jiri Hofman wrote:
If I understood well, Lars has written that _making_ publicly connections between Wikipedia and bad habits around its usage, is bad for Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a powerful tool. And as every powerful tool, it can be used in a good or bad way. We should clearly point out what are those good and bad habits, strongly encourage the good ones and even stronglier discourage the bad ones. This should be a part of Wikipedia's "marketing strategy". I hope such a clear position and strategy would help to stop making connections I wrote about above.
I know wikipedians already do something like this. However, according to Lars' report, it seems we (or at least Swedish wikipedians) don't do enough.
We shouldn't create only the best encyclopedia but also create and propagate instructions how to use it, in order to stop the bad habits. But we should in the first place understand why the connections are bad for Wikipedia.
We _are_ partially responsible how our tool is used.
Jiri
On Wednesday, 30. September 2009 0:33:01 Lars Aronsson wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
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.
Independent learning (when done right) can be useful and important. But that's not how Wikipedia's name is being used here. Those who like independent learning have their own names for it.
Those who call it "Wikipedia education" are the teachers, politicians and newspaper editors who dislike it (or how the method is being abused to reduce costs for teacher salaries). And that's where their abuse of our name becomes our problem.
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
I think Lars means the copy and paste of information without student's process. But this is done with othe online material as well. Again, as Thomas says, it is in the details how it is done. Wikipedia is an important source for learning if this is the task of people who use it as a free source of serious information. Rodolfo
Thomas Dalton wrote:
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.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
In Italy a lot of students use wikipedia for those things. It's a nice kind of research for the largest part of students (for the rest of people too) and teachers usually said that! There is no matter to blame the project(s) of Wikimedia.
Nantas
Da: Rodolfo M Vega rmvega@cs.cmu.edu Data: 30 settembre 2009 01.41.49 GMT+02.00 A: Wikipedia mailing list wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Oggetto: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia education Rispondi a: Wikipedia mailing list wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
I think Lars means the copy and paste of information without student's process. But this is done with othe online material as well. Again, as Thomas says, it is in the details how it is done. Wikipedia is an important source for learning if this is the task of people who use it as a free source of serious information. Rodolfo
Thomas Dalton wrote:
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.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org