On 6/14/07, DJA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
kelsey hudson wrote: > Lan Barnes wrote: >> Sorry I can't help, but I'm curious as to why you say "I might understand >> why they would block wikipedia." Subversive content? Plagarism control? >> Surely having the EB or the World Book in the library is OK, why not >> wikipedia? > > The beauty of wikipedia is that anyone can edit it. > > The downfall of wikipedia is that anyone can edit it. > > Refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_in_popular_culture and > pay special attention to the entries referencing the Colbert Report. > > It's great because any expert on a subject can chime in and change a > page to reflect correct information. But at the same time, Joe Q. Idiot > can come along and change a page to something that might not be correct. > So, the information isn't guaranteed to be correct because there's no > quality control (except by community review, but again, refer to Joe Q. > Idiot). In an educational institution, this is completely unacceptable. > In order for something to be accurate enough and acceptable for > acadaemia, it needs to be reviewed by peers (other experts) and put > through rigorous scrutiny to make sure the information is correct as > possible. Wikipedia can't offer those strict controls; thus in the > interest of educating kids properly, wikipedia isn't usually accepted as > an academic source for schoolwork. I've seen no credible empirical evidence that Wikipedia is any less authoritative on any given random subject than its dead tree counterparts (I'm not saying there is no evidence, I'm saying "Show me some"). The public schools (hell, most any schools) have a long and checkered history of giving kids bad information - much in the form of textbooks. How does Wikipedia not fit into that scheme? Of course dead tree books (more importantly, dead tree text books) tend to be out of date, or incorrect, or missing vital data, or all of that until/unless a new edition comes out correcting the error. But then what are the odds that errata gets passed on to students already exposed to the bad data? While Wikipedia tends to be self-healing. > I'm not in any way denouncing wikipedia -- I find it a wonderful > resource (and often a first searching point) if I'm looking for > information on something I may not already know about. > > However, the reason SDUHSD blocks wikipedia is probably something more > along the lines of the fact that it has articles like > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast (NSFW) which can be quite > distracting to young teenagers. Imagine the calls the school will get > from Mom... > > > -Kelsey As a parent, I'd be more concerned that my child was getting unsupervised access to such information. I'd also be concerned that my child was not getting any educational opinions from the school on why certain content and/or its viewing was inappropriate. Especially in the lower (pre Jr. High) age groups. Is some information harmful to some individuals or groups? if so, then should formalized education include some discussion about why that's true (or isn't)? Oh well, such are the side-effects of living in one of the most puritanical societies on the planet.
My kids attend Grossmont & Santee School Districts. Just about all their teachers don't want any references to wikipedia, even for our high schooler. I've never asked the teachers directly, and maybe I should. My guess is plagiarism, and the fact it's free. If a school district went all open source text books, that's a huge publishing industry loosing a bunch of money. -- Mark Schoonover, CMDBA [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cell: 619-368-0099 Database/System Administration * Software Development * -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
