Hi everyone,
There's been so much talk among educators on whether Wikipedia should be
banned from school, that it may come as a surprise to some that a school
has actually been banned from Wikipedia.
Since November 2002, an anonymous Wikipedia user had been vandalizing
dozens of Wikipedia pages. Because of these vandalisms, the user's IP
address has been blocked repeatedly as a way of preventing them for
wreaking further havoc. It turns out that the vandalism was from a
school computer, so now all users of that computer are unable to make
edits to Wikipedia. This raises many questions about Wikipedia in the
classroom and the need for engaging students to think critically about it.
Here's a snippet from my blog, where I documented the incident:
It's quite understandable for Wikipedians to want to block this IP
address to prevent any more vandalism on the site. But it makes me
wonder just what, if anything, about Wikipedia was being taught in the
school where all of this took place. Since I didn't find any
constructive edits made by the IP address in question, my guess is that
there was no curricular activity in which students were encouraged to
examine Wikipedia critically. In many ways, this incident should serve
as a teachable moment for this school and others. Wikipedia is far from
perfect, but that's what makes it such an interesting tool when it comes
to teaching media literacy. By democratizing the role of editor,
Wikipedia raises important questions regarding credibility, the wisdom
of crowds vs the sovereignty of experts, trust and anonymity, among
other topics.
Students and teachers should debate Wikipedia and even contribute to it;
remember, it's a work-in-progress, not a finished body of work. But all
too often, the debate over Wikipedia's merits is left among the
educators only, with students left out of the conversation and operating
on a simple directive: don't use it. By ignoring Wikipedia rather than
teaching critical, responsible uses of it, schools are practically
inviting students to edit Wikipedia at their own peril. We should be
preparing students for constructive participation in the Read/Write Web;
otherwise it might as well be the Read/Vandalize Web.
More here:
http://www.andycarvin.com/
permalink:
http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2006/03/wikipedia_blocks_sch.html
--
------------------------------
Andy Carvin
acarvin (at) edc . org
andycarvin (at) yahoo . com
http://www.digitaldivide.net
http://www.andycarvin.com
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