BWP Chapter 4- Wikis

BWP Chapter 4- Wikis
“Imagine a world where every single person on the planet was given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.”-Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder.
This quote is inspirational yet for some reason still makes me skeptical. This is great because it has been created to help people learn but isn’t this what the internet is already trying to do? Is it really helping us to bring facts together or just adding more web pages to the internet that already exist in other forms?
Wikipedia is another way to say quick encyclopedia with a Hawaiian twist. It is definitely quick and easy to access the information on wiki. This probably explains why it is very popular with students. But Wikipedia is more than just a source of information; it is a combination of skills. The millions of editors in chief are currently making 400,000 changes to wiki every day. This means they are expressing their skills to collaborate, analyze, critique, write, read, research, be skeptic, and more.
I have heard of wiki but I actually did stay clear of it while doing research papers because I knew I couldn’t use it as a source and therefore felt it a waste of time to view. It is becoming more evident to me that one of the positives to wiki is that it is for the most part neutral. The army of editors tries their best to present accurate information in a way that is most neutral. A neutral source may be a good one to use for science research as long as it is accurate.
While using wikis in the classroom it is very important for the teacher to let the students control it. If used inappropriately it will need to be addressed. If used appropriately the teacher should keep their hand out of it because the students will start to value the ownership they have over the page. Letting the student be the editors determine what information is right, wrong, or biased will teach them valuable skills in editing. This would also be a great time to introduce the concept of “soft security”. Often times students find information from one source and accept it as truth and rarely question it. I will make it very clear to them that there is not an all seeing all knowing wiki go who makes sure that everything is accurate and truthful. It is only monitored by other people surfing wiki, but also that it is a good thing because most people really do want to see the right information rather than vandalizing.
Many teachers are very skeptical to allow students to use wiki for information. I think that I am going to allow my students to use it but not encourage it. After all, they are probably going to use it whether I allow them or not. If they do use it then I want to know about it. They will need to follow a few guidelines when using/citing wiki. They will need to cite wiki information with the date accessed, the age, how many revisions have ever been made, and an alternative source that backs up the chosen wiki info. These requirements will more so be a checkpoint for the students to keep them constantly analyzing the credibility of the wiki information.
I will need to do some wiki research myself. I need to become more comfortable with it and possibly look for information that will coincide with my curriculum and will most likely be searched by students in my class.
Lastly, even if I do not encourage them to use the wiki info to complete research projects I do need to still expose them to wiki. If not for research, do it for fun! It will still teach them the important concepts of wikis and how they work and what they can likely trust and what they may want to be skeptical about.