In 2006 when we began to design blogs, wikis, and podcasts into the ITS program and started to research and write about these tools, we observed some very interesting situations---
1. a leader of our College gave a presentation to the faculty citing Wikipedia as the primary information source;
2. leaders from a small school division participating in one of our workshops could not access Wikipedia, one of the resource links we asked them to use, because it was filtered out;
3. an ITSer implemented her podcast lesson plan with her 1st graders and shared the final products by uploading them to a wiki. Her school webmaster refused to do it so she found another way: Wikis. However, part of her lesson involved 1st graders recording the reading books from their library---a big no-no (any ideas why?) This situation put the use of podcasts, blogs, and wikis on hold for the whole school division until policy was developed.
4. A High School student performs an experiment.
We know a lot more about these tools now as they have been introduced and adopted by many educators. Take one of these situations and analyze the issue or use of Wikis. What can you learn from the situation to inform your own use of wikis in your practice? What do we need to know about Wikis to make them a valuable educational tool?
10 comments:
Was the reading/recording books from the library a copyright issue?
I think Wikis still make educators nervous, and I'm not sure how to fix that. Our student magazine is actually using a Wikipedia story in the upcoming issue, with most teachers saying it's not the big "no-no" that it was in the past, but they still don't consider it a fully reliable option, even though there are things in place to make sure that any errors are caught and corrected quickly, as the article from The Free Lance-Star showed (thanks for the link to my paper, by the way!) :)
As an English teacher, research is part of my curriculum. I am fine with Wikipedia, but I ask that students verify the information in another place, as well. But that's what I teach for just about any online site. It all goes back to what we talked about in the first semester about making sure students are good users of information. All websites are created by someone, and students need to be savvy enough to figure out which ones are valid and which aren't, so website evaluation should take place with just about everything they find online.
As
Wikipedia being filtered......
When we first started learning about Wikis I thought immediately about Wikipedia and the horror stories I had heard about the site. I remember many of my professors making it very clear that we were to never use Wikipedia as a source for any of our papers. It was often very frustrating because when you typically search for information online Wikipedia pops up as one of the first results. I would often ignore my professors advice and still look at Wikipedia, but I would then make sure that I would find similar information in another source so I could site it. This seems like such a waste of time, but it was the way that made sense to me at the time. Despite my personal feelings about not being able to use Wikipedia I found myself giving the same "No Wikipedia" speech to my students. I remember talking with a collegue of mine about my conflicting feelings on the whole Wikipedia subject. We talked about how we understand the caution of having kids rely on Wikis because anyone can edit them. We also discussed how easy Wikipedia can be to use and how we didn't know what the answer was. In the end we decided to let students use Wikipedia as a starting off point, but had them make sure to cross reference their information. Sound familiar? Yes,this was just like what I had done in college.
I guess my point with this whole story is that I do understand the hesitation to use Wikipedia. Even though it is pretty regularly checked, there is this whole stigma that anyone can put anything on there. It does also give educators the opportunity to have this type of discussion with students. We need to use wikis, such as Wikipedia, to show students that we are now prosumers who can create their own wikis of information.
2)
I think that the reason why posting students reading books online was a big no-no was due to privacy issues. With young students (or any students) parents have become very sensitive about their child being posted anywhere on the internet or any information about them being given out. This is a safety percussion on the parents part and is understandable, but from the teacher point of view especially with this lesson if it is just an audio recording of the student and there are no name attached to it then there should not have been an issue, but I am sure that is not how the school district would have seen it if a parent had complained. Privacy is a big issue and something that has to be considered before using any online tools with the students.
1)1. a leader of our College gave a presentation to the faculty citing Wikipedia as the primary information source;
I am not going to lie...I had ZERO clue what a wiki was until a few weeks ago. I look things up on Wikipedia ALL the time and when I first discovered it a few years ago I had no idea that it wasn't a credible source until someone (a teacher, a friend...I don't remember who) told me that anybody can put information on it themselves so it's not all necessarily true. I can guarantee there are people out there who still don't know that! Now that I am experiencing wiki's first hand by actually creating, adding, and editing them, I understand completely why we can not trust Wikipedia as a source. It all makes sense now! I honestly don't think I ever would have fully understood that if it weren't for this course.
1)1. a leader of our College gave a presentation to the faculty citing Wikipedia as the primary information source;
This EXACT scenario is my worst fear for my students in about 10 years. As we plug away through our research unit each year, (which happens to be the most painful one to get through) I can't even keep track of the amount of times I say, write, even shout the words "You may NOT use Wikipedia as a source. It is NOT credible for a research project/paper." Inevitably, I find kids using it every chance they get despite my best efforts to steer them in the direction of more appropriate and credible sources to use for a "formal" (as formal as you can get for a 6th grade research project) paper. And even after all of the reminders, warnings, threats, etc. there is always a large chunk of projects turned in with "Wikipedia" listed as one of the sources on their works cited page. I love to endorse Wikipedia as a great place to "pop over to" to get a quick trivia fact about a celebrity or random event that you just happen to be interested in, but worry so much that people rely on it waaaay too much just because of how convenient it is. I worry that with the internet making information so easy to access--from both trustworthy sites and those that are not credible, people tend to take the idea of convenience to the extreme and choose the site that happens to pop up on Google first, whether it's reasonable or not. As we all know, one of those first sites at the top of search engine list is almost always Wikipedia. While Wikis are a cool resource for so many different reasons, they can also be a huge nuisance and distractor for those who are not educated about ALL that they entail.
I get a bit nervous when I post using social media. In addition, I knew very little about Wikis before taking the ITS course. I knew Wikipedia was not considered to be a reliable source to research information. However, many teachers encourage their students to use Wikipedia. Wikis are great use of technology. Wikis I find help the users to know their audience, and understand what it is that sparks their audience attention. Wikis can link learning to living. In addition, Wikis can be a great tool for a civics class. I can see a bill on the Senate floor and students voting in real time with senators or collaborating in real time regarding a political issue like Obama Care while watching CSPAN. Finally, I find it ironic so many people uses Wikipedia and yet the source is not credible because the users have the ability to alter shared information.
I am guessing it was a copyright issue because they were reading the books from the library. I do not fully understand fair use but I don't think auto recordings of books, at least full text recordings fall under fair use.
As for the Wikipedia being a creditable source, I disagree with most of the other commentators view of it. Yes, anyone can edit some of the entries out there and that does make it possible for bias and untruths in some of the content. However, the editable content is essentially being peer reviewed constantly and errors corrected. Something that may be more difficult when errors are found on other more reputable sources. Wikipedia is an excellent source for research, most of the content is enriched with a multitude of peoples thoughts and their own research. This can make it more accurate and more up to date then other sources.
I do understand the concerns for its content, but I think for the most part the concern is unwarranted. Generally research has to be done across a variety of sources, Wikipedia is just one available source. Instead of steering kids away from using Wikipedia I think the teacher would be better off teaching the little researchers how to evaluate and cross check the information. Wikipedia is used in life, why not in learning?
4. The high school student performs an experiment.
Just like most I too have been told my several teachers not to use Wikipedia. I found the experiment interesting because even though we all know that wikis can be easily edited he has proven that someone out there is watching closely to approve all edits made to the site. I feel as though educators need to be brought up to speed on the Wikipedia. After reading his short experiment I'm confident it allowing students to use it during research projects. Anyone that is researching a topic should use more than one source for information anyway. I personal don't see the harm in using it as long as good researching habits are being taught as well. We want students to have several sources of information so why not let one of them be Wikipedia. I also believe that sharing the HS experiment with colleagues would be a great way to open up a conversation about using wikis in the classroom.
I agree with Michele that sharing this experiment on Wikis with colleagues would be beneficial in sparking conversation about wiki's and their writing style and affordances. Fear of the unknown is one of the greatest powers in education in my opinion, thus not knowing exactly what wikipedia is or even what a wiki is can scare most educators away from using them in the classroom. How can a new tool be valuable if we do not know the context of its use or the affordances of how a tool can increase student learning and engagement. What a great example to diffuse that fear in educators.
Like several people have already mentioned, before taking this course I never understood that there was such a thing as a wiki. I knew there was Wikipedia and Wikipedia offshoots, like Wikibooks and others, but I had assumed that wiki was a trade name, not a noun.
Until two weeks ago I had no idea that individuals, classrooms, schools, community groups, etc. could so easily create their own wikis and communally update and amend them. Somehow I just assumed this role was only assigned to people with official credentials. I had no idea someone like me could create a wiki!
I also had no idea how easy it was to update a wiki. I'm responsible for updating our office website, but that always takes multiple steps and accessing a special authoring website. Wikis provide one-stop-shopping where you can easily switch from reading to editing. This is terrific!
Now I can see how wikis can be very valuable to enhancing communication and information gathering in so many different instances in lots of different aspects of life - in learning environments, in working environments, in community service environments, even in neighborhood and family communities. I mean a wiki would be a great way to create a family history where relatives of all ages could be inputting their stories!
I, also, had heard all the horror stories about Wikipedia not being a credible source of information, but after reading Richardson's book and especially his description of the reporting of the tsunami event and how people around the world were posting and update information in real-time, I can now see what an important role this kind of tool can play. This would be particularly important for people who live in countries with oppressive regimes who are not given access to general news sources. If they could gain access to a source like Wikipedia, they could possibly learn the real story that they can't hear themselves in their home village or town.
The article written by teenager explaining his experiment with falsifying information on Wikipedia was fascinating. It shows how amazingly quickly the resource is policed. There are probably lots of people out there who love to correct others and make sure that anything that's incorrect is immediately changed so this experiment, while only three instances, certainly shows that updating happens and happens fast on public resources like this. Faster than on a webpage, that's for sure!
I always think that we should encourage people to use multiple sources so that it is clear that the information found is correct and verifiable. I don't see why Wikipedia can't be used by students as one of their sources of information.
Maybe the problem is that many people is positions of power are still of the older generation and they really have no idea what these tools are really about. It is easy to jump to conclusions when you don't have a full grasp of a situation. Maybe if they were all shown that teenager's experiment, they might even start to think twice.
The younger generation is not going to stop using Wikipedia. It is part of the background of their childhoods. What is important is for them to understand why they need to consider sources and how to cross-reference to verify the sources chosen.
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