Due to my birth position of "digital immigrant" I did doubt the accuracy of wikipedia information. I mean in theory does it really sound as if it can work - an encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone in the world, regardless of education, knowledge or expertise. Compared to the old school encyclopedias complied by expertise in their field, whose entire job is to compile information. I mean it doesn't sound like it should work, that it could possibly compare in accuracy, that is why I was quite surprised when we saw in lectures that there were very few errors between the two pedias (wiki , and britannia).
My thing with internet information is we as teachers need to set students up to analyse and seriously examine the accuracy of the information - as with all information. They really have to be taught to examine it and look for biases and inaccuracies that don't make sense. Many are happy to copy/paste - done. If it is on line it is true.
Here is my case in point, if a student was to believe what this website claims to be true about the haggis
http://haggishunt.scotsman.com/haggisclopedia.cfm
they possibly wouldn't get the best mark.
Wikipedia however did pass the accuracy test. This is taken from the wikipedia page on haggis,
"A frequent tale is that a "Haggis" is a small Scottish animal with one set of legs longer than the other so that it can stand on the steep Scottish Highlands without falling over. According to one poll, 33% of American visitors to Scotland believe haggis to be an animal.[13]"
Maybe the Americans in this poll have been taken their information from the bogus "haggishunt" website, and not questioned the information found online.
I'm sure teachers in the past had to train students to question newspaper biases and author biases. Maybe we as teachers are failing to provide students with these questions skills required when examining any information. Maybe students need to value their own opinions more, and trust that it is ok to question things, seek alternative views, examine and evaluate them. So, I stand corrected wikipedia is a good source of information, so are encyclopedias - but we still need to train students there really is no one stop place for the answers.
Hi Jennie. I think you have hit the nail on the head when you say that we have to teach students that there is "no one stop place for all the answers." It is such a big world of information out there for students to navigate through, and it must be so confusing learning how to judge if a source is trustworthy. You might enjoy this video about web literacy, secondary based but still relevant for us primary teachers. http://www.teachers.tv/videos/secondary-ict-web-literacy
ReplyDeleteI really like your last sentence, where you point out that "there really is no one stop place for the answers". If you can get this point across to students, you will have gone a long way towards helping them to acquire some level of information literacy (or critical literacy, as it's sometimes called). Maybe your haggis website would be a good place to get them to begin sorting fact from fiction ...
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I agree with you that Wikipedia is a strange phenomenon, one which works much better in practice than in theory!
thanks mark - I think what saves Wikipedia, and makes it work, is the fact it is popular. I wonder if the information would be as accurate if it remained a small, little known website with only a limited number of contributors. With masses of people contributing I think the incorrect info is quickly replaced and swallowed by the majority.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt you need a certain critical mass of users to make a site like Wikipedia function. Actually, you see this with different articles - errors in more popular articles are corrected quite quickly, while it can take rather longer with more obscure topics.
ReplyDeleteJennie
ReplyDeleteI was like you and had no idea Wikipedia had a lot of authors and could be edited by anyone until Mark told us.
I agree with you that students need to be taught to evaluate anything they are not sure on.
Yes, when I was at school teachers would give us print material to analyse, just as we would with digital today so the basics of teaching has not changed, but as I mentioned in a previous comment to you, the tools have and we need to adjust to that change.
In my blog on critical literacy I used an example of the tree octupus to highlight to readers how children can believe anything that appears authentic.