Ch 4 Response

Ch 4: Wikis

My opinion on wikipedia has changed since taking this course and reading this chapter. I always used wikipedia to get quick information, but was always told by professors NEVER to use wikipedia, and they would not accept a paper that had wikipedia listed as a source. In fact, I had never even heard of wikipedia until I was in my Public Policy class sophomore year and the professor was going over our research paper, and he said the one thing he did not want to see was wikipedia, and wrote it on the board. So that was my first impression of it, but it has since changed. I think the fact that anyone can edit and add to wikipedia pages allows the widest depth of knowledge possible, since anyone in the world with information about a topic can contribute. They may not all be experts, but if their information is invalid, it will soon be fixed by someone else. Our Public School Music teacher said he was experimenting with wikipedia and edited University of Louisville's "notable alumni" to add himself. A couple of days later, it was removed and he received an email with the reason why it was removed, that "there was no evidence of this person being notable". I think this shows how moderated each article is. Because everyone is allowed to contribute, there is going to be an article on just about anything that anyone would ever want information on. I think the author's analysis on the wikipedia entry after the tsunami in 2004 shows how widespread and active wikipedia is. There was already a wikipedia entry 9 hours after the tsunami hit. It began as a 76-word post, and within 48 hours, the entry was over 6,500 and had been edited 1,200 times with over a dozen photos of the incident. This shows how fast information travels and how fast wikipedia had a detailed account of the incident posted for others to see. I think the ideas for using wikis in the classroom are very interesting. Using one as a classroom review that is ever-changing to update new material, or using it as a classroom resource that all students can conrtibute to is a very good idea. The PBwiki we have used for our classroom has been a very useful tool by providing us with all of the links we need, the assignments we need to do, etc. I think we could use this same concept in our own classrooms as a useful way to integrate technology into our classrooms.