Wikis

I have a love-hate relationship with Wikipedia. It is a useful resource for certain, but students treat it as an authoritative site way too often. Some people don't realize that it can be modified by anybody. I was working at a high school and a geography teacher (& coach) was allowing his students to use it for a research project. He appeared genuinely ignorant when I explained the nature of wikis and suggested some alternative sites better suited for the task. Don't get me wrong- wikis definitely have a place in education. I recently attended a workshop on library 2.0 technologies where the instructor posted most of the workshop information on a wiki. We could go to the wiki and modify some of the samples set up there or refer back to it later. A class could create a wiki for a particular project or assignment and everybody could take some ownership of the final product. When I went to Wikipedia today, I looked up "gerbil" for my daughter who wants to get one as a pet. I was paying more attention and noticed that the content was peppered with dispute and lack of reference notations. When I checked the discussion, there were some rather inappropriate comments. Under "view source" it said that the page was semi-protected to prevent vandalism, so apparently there have been some problems with this particular page. If you want students to appreciate how inexpert Wikipedia can be, checking the discussion is very enlightening. The page was rated "B," which is interesting because I didn't realize that pages were graded. My overall feeling on wikis is that they have a lot of potential, but should be used with caution.