The
internet and all of its subsidiaries continue to make my life easier and easier
by the minute. The accessibility to
information has always been my main reason for using the internet. Having that said, there is a lot of
information out there that can be extraneous and must be cross-referenced with
other sources. That’s how I feel about
the internet as a whole, especially Wikipedia and YouTube. However, I use both tools on a regular basis,
mainly because of their popularity and convenience. I need information quickly, so I thought it
was neat when I read the “Teaching and Learning Online with Wikis” article and
saw that wiki was a Hawaiian word meaning quick.
My
feelings in regard to using Wikipedia and YouTube as references may be
different than that of other teachers. I
urge my students to use both tools as networking instruments. They can think off Wikipedia as a forum of facts,
ideas and opinions from people all over the globe. Now these facts should be cross-referenced if
you are going to use them in a paper. In
other words, I have no problem with my students using Wikipedia, so long as
that is not their only source of information.
Furthermore, Wikipedia provides an extensive list of references, further
reading, and external links to advance your research. To put it another way, if you are just using
Wikipedia for a paper, you aren’t being very thorough.
I liked the way you put your thoughts about Wikipedia "as a forum of facts, ideas and opinions from people all over the globe." We are living in a global community and this really stresses that. Perhaps that could be a lesson in and of itself, to research the researchers, where do they come from?
ReplyDeleteExactly. Wikipedia is a great place to start when researching to get ideas. Even though it is a compilation of resources, one still wants to explore all possible avenues to maximize information.
ReplyDelete