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September 27, 2005
Are Educators Hostile to Wikipedia?
Last July, I posted a blog entry about strategies teachers could use to incorporate Wikipedia into classroom practice. The post received a lot of commentary in the blogosphere, some positive, some negative, but all quite interesting.
I then received an email from Jimmy Wales, the creator of Wikipedia, who noted one particular sentence I used in my essay:
On Wikipedia in particular, we talked about the hostility that many educators have towards the website, particularly their concerns that it can't be considered a reliable source.
Jimbo took issue with my use of the word hostility when describing how many educators felt about Wikipedia. In his experience, Jimbo felt that the majority of educators had quite the opposite feeling, being supportive of Wikipedia.
I found this surprising. From a purely anecdotal perspective, particularly among k-12 librarians, I'd heard a lot of complaints about Wikipedia being unreliable and inappropriate for students. At conferences I'd felt sometimes I was the only person in the room supportive of Wikipedia as a teaching tool. Perhaps one of us was just hearing from a vocal minority. Or perhaps one of us just had it wrong.
Jimbo and I then went through the archive of my WWWEDU list to see if we could find any instances of educators painting Wikipedia in a negative light, and at that particular time, we couldn't. So it was basically Jimbo's gut feeling versus my gut feeling, with no quotes to back it up decisively one way or another.
So I suggested to Jimbo that we make our conversation public and see what educators actually have to say about Wikipedia. For example, is Wikipedia something you'd want your students using in the classroom? Do you consider it an appropriate teaching tool? If so, how? If not, why not?
If you're a teacher and a blogger, we'd like to encourage you to respond by posting something on your blog. If you do, please tag the post with wikipedia in the classroom so it's easier for all of us to follow the discussion, no matter where the blog entries are being posted. If you're not a blogger, email me your comments and I'll compile them for posting on my blog.
Personally, I hope Jimbo's right, since I see lots of potential uses for Wikipedia in the classroom. It's just that my gut is still telling me something else. Either way, we'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter. -andy
Posted by acarvin at September 27, 2005 3:37 PM
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