Before this week, my experience with Wikipedia was limited to discussing with students the pros and cons of using such a site for research. My students and I discuss that at this point, most historians will not want to see Wikipedia listed as a source. I wonder if this will change in the future. Many of my students will check the Wikipedia page for a topic and then check the list of references for clues on where they may go to continue with their research.
After working more with Wikipedia this week, I think I prefer being someone who views Wikipedia, but not someone who contributes to it. I did add a page for the school where I teach. I wonder whether it will last because the only source I had available was our website. I tried finding some articles that have been written about the school, but was unable to locate them this week. I added basic information about the school, including where we are located and how the school is structured. Below is a screen shot of the page I created.
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| Ann Arbor Learning Community on Wikipedia |
I do think that I will prefer using my own wiki the most. I began one that I plan to share with my students. I'm hoping maybe we can use it to gather information about certain topics we study this year. I don't have a way to invite them to wikispaces right now, so I'll need to discuss it in class with them and see who is interested in using this. I'm hopeful some of them will like the concept of being able to edit the page. Our class wiki is based on a song and quote used at the beginning of the school year: AALC Welcome to the Future.
Hi Abby,
ReplyDeleteThis was the first time I had created or edited anything in Wikipedia. I have created Wikis to use in classes before but never was able to fully use them. It kind of scares me that it is so easy to edit information on Wikipedia. I knew it was easy, but maybe not as easy as it actually was.