Hi Valerie,

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 8:50 PM, valerie <[email protected]> wrote:
> As an assignment in a community college course, my students  are asked
> to find a learning resource in WikiEducator. Finding good learning
> objects in WE can be difficult, so I have included this assignment to
> have students find what they thought was complete and interesting.
> Although there is usually some frustration, they find some amazing WE
> pages. I'm accumulating a list of pages they discover.
>
> However, sometimes I get more information and feedback than I
> bargained for... I though this was an interesting comment from one of
> my students.
> "Also, the color scheme and design of the website is exactly the same
> as Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia is known for false information, and cannot
> be used for research papers. I feel that this site is similar to
> Wikipedia; therefore, this site's information cannot be trusted."
>


See Special Report Internet encyclopaedias go head to head Jim Giles
Nature 438, 900-901 (15 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/438900a;
Published online 14 December 2005

The study by Nature suggests that in scientific articles, the accuracy
of articles in wikipedia vs encylopedia britannica are near equal



Several other studies have been done on this phenomenon. See refs in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia



> Sigh... Yes, some of our faculty are convinced that Wikipedia and by
> association, all wikis, especially those that look like Wikipedia
> because they use Mediawiki are evil and populated by gangs of internet
> hooligans intent on provide false information to unsuspecting web
> users. They explicitly forbid the use of Wikipedia.
>

This position by people in academia is simply ignorant of the facts
connected to the issue. One could counter argue that forbidding the
use of Wikipedia or wikis in education is a massive disservice to
students, given that:


1. Wikis are in widespread use throughout the world, and thus
delivering literacies for effective use of collaborative learning
tools and processes is fundamental to education in the 21st century

2. There is no sound basis for total rejection of wikis, given that
all studies conclude that wiki references tend to be at least as
accurate as commercially produced references.


> Has anyone else heard of similar credibility issues for WikiEducator
> content? Is this something that is limiting adoption of WE learning
> objects?
>

This attitude is widespread in academia due to fear. Academia is
afraid that collaborative learning in the digital medium will obsolete
the monopoly that  Universities and related institutions now have on
resources and educational domains.

The flip side of this is that some institutions *are* adopting
collaborative technologies, as we've found in our work producing the
open source http://socialmediaclassroom.com project software


> ..Valerie
>
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-- 
-- 
Sam Rose
Social Synergy
Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
skype: samuelrose
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http://socialsynergyweb.com
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http://socialmediaclassroom.com
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http://notanemployee.net
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"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
ambition." - Carl Sagan
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