[Web4lib] Wikipedia

[Karen Merguerian]

I  recommend this article by Houman Harouni from the Harvard Educational Review (may need a subscription to read it, though!).  


"High school research and critical literacy: social studies with and 
despite wikipedia"

http://www.metapress.com/content/dxxt414m1224j7v1/fulltext.pdf



The article is about how a high school teacher addressed the pedagogical problems and opportunities 
presented by Wikipedia.    



The teacher started by wondering, should he disparage Wikipedia?  Allow it to be cited unquestioningly?  Should he deliberately vandalize it? Show students how to contribute to it?  Over the course of his teaching this class, he worked through all of the 
above and more.



The conclusion was basically that an effective approach to wikipedia is not just to talk about it with students, but allow them to participate in it.  Reflecting about the rewards and frustrations of their participation became part of their research and writing assignments.  



This led his class to direct engagement with wikipedia, and to a new 
understanding of the problems and issues around authorship and scholarly
 discourse in an age of crowdsourcing.  


How he did this, and what he learned from his students makes very eye-opening reading. Highly recommended.  



Karen Merguerian
NU Libraries




> Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:11:06 +1000
> From: janettetreanor at gmail.com
> To: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Subject: [Web4lib] Wikipedia
> 
> Morning All,
> 
> I am wondering what you think of Wikipedia? I would appreciate hearing your
> opinion.
> 
> kind regards
> janette
> _______________________________________________
> Web4lib mailing list
> Web4lib at webjunction.org
> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/
> 
 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft’s powerful SPAM protection.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/210850552/direct/01/