Good Morning All,
I have been reading this thread with great interest, and now I feel that it's my
turn to jump into the fray! As part of my Big6 research unit with all freshman and
juniors, I devote a portion of one class to a discussion of Wikipedia. I always
start off by asking them their opinions of Wikipedia. A few students inevitably
raise their hands and grudgingly tell me that it's bad and unreliable. Their jaws
always drop, however, when I tell them that I really like it and think it's
incredibly useful! Some even cheer. I did NOT always feel this way, however, but I
thought about it a lot and I believe that it's a little misleading to tell students
that Wikipedia is a source with no worth or credibility. I actually think that it's
a goldmine of information to kick off a research experience. I really and truly
understand where everyone is coming from, however, so I say this with all due
respect to my colleagues! I use Wikipedia in both my personal and professional life
a great deal. !
Whenever I'm faced with researching a topic with which I'm unfamiliar, I'll often
read the Wikipedia article for an overview of the topic, which almost always
provides me with a multitude of helpful information: great keywords (names, places,
subtopics, etc.); links to other Wikipedia articles which provide me with further
useful overviews and keywords; footnotes and citations which point me to other
books and articles; external links (section at the very bottom of every Wikipedia
article) which actually take me to other websites that may be useful for my
research. I get all of this from Wikipedia, and I think that's a great thing!
Because I use and value Wikipedia personally, I feel that it's dishonest of me to
denigrate it to students. We always talk about its weaknesses, however, and I feel
that students leave our discussion with an understanding of how and why it's
useful, but also why it's not an appropriate academic resource to cite (authority
of authorship is importa!
nt when using info from a source-- I do hear my colleagues who argue that it's
perhaps elitist to refuse to cite a "less worthy" source, but when you use a
Wikipedia article as a jumping off point, without taking notes from it and
populating your final project with facts from other, cited, sources, I feel like
it's appropriate not to cite Wikipedia). Again, I feel that it's inauthentic to
dismiss Wikipedia outright as a useless resource, when I know it's not useless!
Kids are going to use it regardless of what we tell them (not necessarily for
school projects, but certainly in their own lives), and I think that it sidelines
us professionally, in the eyes of the kids, when they KNOW it's useful, but we are
telling them that it's not. Jump on board, I say, and teach them to use it in the
best way possible, while still protecting the academic rigor and expectations of
good research!
Respectfully,
Alicia Duell
Library Media Specialist
Riverside Brookfield High School
Riverside, IL 60546
duella@rbhs208.org
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