Thursday, February 25, 2010
Throughts on Wikis
I am realizing more and more how powerful Wikis are. My first experience with them was two years ago when most of our sign-up sheets for things would be posted to the school's Wiki on Blackboard. As a school we now manage PLC meetings and collect and share committee information using Wikis. So, I have seen how efficient this tool is when collaborating and communicating from a distance. Experiencing it from the designer end this semester with our advocacy project and our ITSopedia entries has made me even more of a believer. I think as we educate kids for a global society this is going to be a huge part of their lives and it makes sense we incorporate it sooner rather than later in the sequence of teaching and learning. I will say, however, that I am not as quick to get on the bandwagon for Wikipedia. With all we learned in 1st semester about the Halo Effect, I just can't get on board with something that seems to make the dissemination of incorrect information so easy.
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"something that seems to make the dissemination of incorrect information so easy."
ReplyDeleteI can see where you are coming from on this, but I don't think it is any easier in Wikipedia to distribute incorrect information than any other form of media now days. The news over the past couple of years has been packed with apologies and critiques of print and digital media companies fabricating stories and reports as well as misquotes and situations taken out of context.
For me this boils down to the simple fact that people; parents, teachers, students, all need to take responsibility for their own intake of information and the maintenance and up keep of their own personal information filters. That for me is one of the biggest reasons that I would like to continue to push "Digital Literacy" in my classroom and with my family.
-Just my two sense.
I totally agree with Onyxviper!!!! Richardson says that the key to embracing Wikipedia and other similar tools is use it ourselves, test it out, find other sources and compare. So that's what I did...throughout the literature review period of a dissertation. One problem I did find is that I really had to be good at focusing on my topic and to not get too far off track by reading all that information. Sometimes I would come across a concept associated with my topic and had to really think: Is this a path I want to investigate further?
ReplyDeleteThe Halo Effect is certainly something to think about here and I think it is awesome how we are connecting Semester 1 of ITS with Semester 5. Wikipedia provides us with another source to use as we teach students about being good evaluators of information.