HermitFromPluto wrote:(PS And I agree with you on Wikipedia, it's left traditional encyclopaedias such as EB in the dust)
Badmike wrote:It's great on pop culture, current events, tv shows, movie stars, media stuff in general...It's horrific on anything political, controversial or religious.I've related this before, a friend of mine who is a history teacher noticed some very suspicious items in some papers he assigned. The kids were taking attributions and references directly from Wiki with very dubious results sometimes. He now deducts a letter grade for any Wiki reference in a paper...encouraging the students to go to the library and do their own research from a variety of sources. It's amazing how many of his students thought they could just surf wikipedia to write all their history papers without any original research at all.Mike B.
It may be time to start rethinking how we teach kids. Instead of 'Write an assignment on Henry V' , it may have to be 'Read these three articles on Henry V (EB, Wiki, book article), note any differences? Which do you find to be the best article and why?'
MShipley88 wrote:In my direct experience, today's high school and middle school students do not know the difference between "write" and "download."I have seen 8th graders turn in papers that were cut and pasted directly from Encarta...and then get mad when this wasn't good enough. They seriously do not know the difference. "You asked me to find this information! Well...here it is!"Given the critical thinking skills of the average person, I suspect that many students would be honestly unable to tell the difference between Wikipedia and any other source of information.So, the start of any assignment would have to include the admonition that Wikipedia downloads will result in an F.
HermitFromPluto wrote:Interesting points. I imagine that primary and secondary school curricula will need to adapt to the information age - what with kids having everything available at the touch of a button. I imagine a lot of the teaching is still similar to when we went to school and you had to borrow books from libraries to learn about a subject.It may be time to start rethinking how we teach kids. Instead of 'Write an assignment on Henry V' , it may have to be 'Read these three articles on Henry V (EB, Wiki, book article), note any differences? Which do you find to be the best article and why?'It is an interesting subject, I had a another discussion a few years ago on how the information age is actually de-educating rather than educating. This was more along the lines of if kids have 100 channels, are they going to watch news and documentaries or sport and flashing music clips?
