Here's a short essay I posted on my blog last night that I thought might be of interest... -andy
Turning Wikipedia into an Asset for Schools http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2005/07/turning_wikiped.html Art Wolinsky and I went to dinner tonight just outside of Atlantic City, where I'll be leading a two-day workshop on documentary making for a group of elementary school teachers. During dinner, Art and I talked about what I'll be presenting tomorrow morning, as well as fun Internet topics such as video blogging, podcasting and Wikipedia. On Wikipedia in particular, we talked about the hostility that many educators have towards the website, particularly their concerns that it can't be considered a reliable source. It's the classic dilemma of a wiki website - because wikis allow any site visitor to edit or add content, you raise the risk of getting content that isn't up to snuff. And the fact that young and old alike often go to Wikipedia and see that its name ends in -pedia, they assume it's just like any other encyclopedia and they should take its content as vetted, accurate information, which ain't always the case. I explained to Art the community of Wikipedia volunteers known as Wikipedians who have created a system of checks and balances to improve the quality of content and avoid problems with virtual graffiti and inaccuracies. But it's not a perfect system, so it's not a huge surprise that a lot of educators just don't want their students utilizing the site. I had a flashback; a group of us on the WWWEDU email list had tried to create a "Kidopedia" - an online encyclopedia written entirely by kids - back in 1996, hosted by St. John's University. It didn't get very far because all encyclopedia entries were being posted manually by real people; that, and the fact that it was hard to articulate a compelling case as to why kids should be doing this in the first place. While I understand educators' concerns about directing kids towards "reliable" reference sources, the more I think about it, the more I think Wikipedia's flaws actually make it an ideal learning tool for students. That may sound counterintuitive, of course - how can you recommend a tool that you know may not be accurate? Well, that's precisely the point: when you go to Wikipedia, some entries are better referenced than others. That's just a basic fact. Some entries will have a scrupulous list of sources cited and a detailed talk page on which Wikipedians debate the accuracy of information presented in order to improve it. Others, though, will have no sources cited and no active talk pages. To me, this presents teachers with an excellent authentic learning activity in which students can demonstrate their skills as scholars. Here's a quick scenario. Take a group of fifth grade students and break them into groups, with each group picking a topic that interests them. Any topic. Dolphins, horses, hockey, you name it. Next, send the groups of kids to Wikipedia to look up the topic they selected. Chances are, someone has already created a Wikipedia entry on that particular subject. The horse, for example, has an extensive entry on the website. It certainly looks accurate and informative, but is it? Unfortunately, there are no citations for any of the facts claimed about horses on the page. This is where it gets fun. The group of students breaks down the content on the page into manageable chunks, each with a certain amount of facts that need to be verified. The students then spend the necessary time to fact-check the content. As the students work their way through the list, they'll find themselves with two possible outcomes: either they'll verify that a particular factoid is correct, or they'll prove that it's not. Either way, they'll generate a paper trail, as it were, of sources proving the various claims one way or another. Once the Wikipedia entry has been fact-checked, the teacher creates a Wikipedia login for the class. They go to the entry's talk page and present their findings, laying out every idea that needs to be corrected. Then, they edit the actual entry to make the corrections, with all sources cited. Similarly, for all the parts of the entry they've verified as accurate, they list sources confirming it. That way, each idea presented in the Wikipedia entry has been verified and referenced - hopefully with multiple sources. Get enough classrooms doing this, you kill several birds with one stone: Wikipedia's information gets better, students help give back to the Net by improving the accuracy of an important online resource, and teachers have a way to make lemons into lemonade, turning Wikipedia from a questionable information source to a powerful tool for information literacy. I can already see it now: an official K-12 Seal of Approval put on Wikipedia entries that have been vetted by students. Wish I were more handy in Photoshop. -andy -- ----------------------------------- Andy Carvin Program Director EDC Center for Media & Community acarvin @ edc . org http://www.digitaldivide.net http://www.tsunami-info.org Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com ----------------------------------- _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
