[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia for education

[Andrew Smith]

Hi Dan,

I have to disagree a bit I'm afraid. Before I discovered Wikipedia my
internet maths bible was  www.mathworld.wolfram.com, a pretty comprehensive
maths encyclopaedia. Now, revising for my final university maths exams I
probably use both Wolfram and Wikipedia with about equal frequency. I trust
Wikipedia's content because I know that lots of the maths related articles
have been looked over (or created) by users like Michael Hardy and Axel
Boldt. From their contributions it's clear that they know what they're
talking about (there's other users I could mention here).

I'm not convinced that Wikipedia's fallability is such a bad thing, it's a
good demonstration of the fact that you should never base something entirely
on one source. If I'm trying to understand a maths topic I'll generally look
it up on Wikipedia, Wolfram, the books on my shelves and the notes from my
lectures. None of these sources are perfect (sadly, especially my lecture
notes) but often the different explanations between the four can shed light
on the topic.

Also, I don't really have any idea how, for example, Britannica writes their
maths articles. Do they actually employ mathematicians to write them? Do
they get a list of Topics in Maths and do some googling? It's probably true
that Britannica have a lower error/article ratio than Wikipedia but it
doesn't mean I should have blind faith in them. In fact, I expect that the
more esoteric the topic, the more likely it is to have errors in it as it's
more difficult to check. Another example could be biographies of long dead
people, how much effort do they put into looking through contemporary
research on the person and how much do they, in effect, just reprint out of
date versions from years ago?

Anyway, I'm beginning to ramble so I'll wrap this up. My point is that used
properly (the same as every other resource) I believe that Wikipedia is a
useful educational resource.

Cheers,

Andrew (Ams80)


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2003 1:24 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia for education


> Like I said before: *in theory*, wikipedia is a great
> educational source, but *in practice*, no one believes
> it. Wikipedia does have its flaws that I believe could
> be solved by this.
>
> --LittleDan
>
> --- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > I believe it already is a "valid educational
> > source".
> >
> > Waiting for approval from educational bureaucrats,
> > and being restricted
> > by their political whims would destroy Wikipedia as
> > we know it.  The
> > scrutiny would be not just on an article by article
> > basis, but on a
> > school district by school district basis.  The range
> > of these from
> > permissive open-minded to Christian or Islamic
> > fundamentalist is so wide
> > that we would never have the resources to do all the
> > needed editing.
> >
> > Wikipedia's primary value is not as a static source
> > in the way that a
> > printed book or CD wuld be.  It is as a growing,
> > dynamic and editable
> > source.  In the perpetual battle between the
> > irresistable force and the
> > immovable object we are on the side of the
> > irresistable force.  Here in
> > British Columbia the provincial department of
> > education (at least in
> > theory) bases education on three principles of
> > learning.  The one that
> > is relevant in this context is that education
> > requires the active
> > participation of the learner.  The learner is not
> > there to just
> > passively vacuum up knowledge; he needs to
> > contribute to that knowledge
> > interactively.  The old model based on respecting
> > the elders who
> > painstakingly amassed a precious body of knowledge
> > is not working as
> > well as it used to.
> >
> > In the economic terms of supply and demand the
> > supply of knowledge has
> > been made higher than ever by electronic means.  The
> > last time knowledge
> > got such a boost came with Gutenberg in the 15th
> > century.  Taking an
> > example from a modern 18th century democracy like
> > the United States, we
> > have the Electoral College.  It reflects a time when
> > Gutenberg's
> > revolution had taken hold, but before the
> > revolutions in transportation
> > of the 19th century.  Communicating the results of
> > elections from
> > Georgia and New Hampshire was not a simple task.  It
> > would have
> > stretched the imagination of the drafters of the
> > constitution to
> > conceive that some day a far larger and more
> > populous country would be
> > able to have all the results in one place before the
> > end of voting day.
> >   (The Florida anomaly would have been no less
> > baffling to them as to the
> > modern person.)
> >
> > Returning to education, the opportunity that we
> > offer is in dynamically
> > learning the skills of democratic participation.
> > Focusing on the
> > negative act of controling sexually explicit
> > material or the positive
> > act of promoting religious or patriotic values would
> > both have us
> > missing the opportunity.  Part of the skill too is
> > learning to cope with
> > the disruptive elements in the society.
> >
> > I could maintain this rant a lot longer! :-)
> >
> > Eclecticology
> >
> >
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>
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