User:Tonisant/Teaching Wikipedia

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Embracing Wikipedia as a Learning & Teaching Resource

I presented these ideas at the University of Hull's Technology Expo on Wednesday 23 March 2011:

Wikipedia is the devil. This is the general feeling from teachers at all levels of education. It's understandable that those of us trained through authoritative, fixed texts would feel this way about Wikipedia. The countless examples of mischief across all sorts of pages reinforces the idea that Wikipedia is not a useful tool for learning and teaching, especially in higher education. However, Wikipedia remains popular with students for all sorts of reason. It's an obvious short-cut to finding out about something, even if what you find out is not always entirely accurate. It's also a great springboard to further online (even offline) information about a specific topic.

If students are going to use Wikipedia anyway, one way or another, why don't we as lecturers and tutors provide them with a support mechanism than ensures they:
a. understand how a wiki really works (i.e. collaboration)
b. learn to distinguish between "reliable", "less reliable", and "unreliable" sources
c. comprehend the difference between subjective and objective viewpoints
d. discover ways to produce data on the internet rather than just consume it


Wikipedia in the Classroom

On Wednesday 5 January 2011 I attended a webinar organized by Educause called Wikipedia in the Classroom: Changing the Way Teachers and Students Use Wikipedia. [1]

The session was presented by Annie Lin [2] [3] [4] [5]

Here are some related links and resources from that session:


EDUCAUSE ARCHIVES FOR WIKIPEDIA WEBINARS


Wikipedia Education Programs

Wikipedia Ambassador Program


Related Articles by Andy Carvin

Andy Carvin is founding editor of the Digital Divide Network, an online community of more than 9,000 Internet activists working to bridge the digital divide. He is the author of the pioneering online education resource EdWeb: Exploring Technology & School Reform launched in 1994. He has published extensively through his blog, Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth.[6]


Criticism


See also



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