Last year I had one of those incredible professional discoveries. I think these discoveries only come along once every few years. During my search last year for quality Professional Development I stumbled across the Education.au organisation. I had a chance to attend one of their one day workshops as well as a session presented by their CEO at another conference later in the year. In this day and age of being able to listen into podcasts of PD all over the world I have become very picky as to what seminars I will make the effort to attend myself. I have not been disappointed with the Education.au workshops and events. They are cutting edge and world class. I have just started going through the Education.au blogs. These are a series of blogs written by different staff at the organisation and are really starting to raise some good issues of discussion. A recent post on there discusses the issues of wikipedia and what we should be doing with this resource and ones similar. It got me thinking, and once again I decided to write an entire post as my response to Garry’s post.
So what is it that is concerning us in education about wikipedia? I have decided to address two main points here….
1) I guess we are worried about the authority of source.
2) and that students are relying on it far too much
Authority of source:
I have written quite a great deal about authority of source in the past. So I am not going to re-hash my arguments that lead down the path of a philosophical debate that challenged so many readers. Been there, done that, and bought the Tshirt…. (If you are interested in reading my thoughts have a look through the discussions from late last year….). Rather I am going to challenge the concerns that many teachers seem to have with students referencing a source such as wikipedia. I cringe at the content driven curriculum we serve up to students in today’s classrooms. We are more interested in what they can regurgitate instead of what they can apply, analyze and synthesize. There is no doubt that there may be some inaccurate information on wikipedia and it is possible that it may mislead your students, however, why aren’t we using this tool to create what I believe could be a meaningful learning experience. An Example…. Student uses wikipedia to find information for a report…. Given the warning that comes from the site itself on the possible inaccuracies of the information the student’s task is to verify the information they have gathered from other sources. The assessment should then come not just from what the student regurgitated from a variety of sources, but the skills the student used in justifying and verifying their information. This is what I believe to be the number 1 skill that students in the 21st century need to develop. Verify and justify your content. Probably a skill we could get them to develop with the use of books from the library. Some information in books may be out dated…. perhaps the students could use digital sources to verify the information in the library resources. I remember a student some years ago writing about earthquakes, she wrote a paragraph about the most recent earthquakes to cause human devastation. According to that student’s report the most recent earthquake that caused human devastation was the Kobe Earthquake in Japan in the 1990′s. Her information obviously came from a book that was printed in the mid 90′s. When I talked to her about her report, letting her know that the information was inaccurate I realised that we as educators spend to much time teaching our students how to reproduce information and not enough time on helping them verify and justify information, as well as understanding the relevance of information (don’t get me started on bias). The skill this student needed was to simply realise that the book she was referencing was almost 10 years old and that there could have very well been more tragic earthquakes in the world since the printing of the book.
Students who rely on such sites too frequently:
I understand and agree with these concerns given my previous points. However, banning such sites is certainly not the answer – And giving a student a “F” if they use Wikipedia is certainly not going to help the cause. This is almost as fair as giving a student an F for using an out dated book from the school library as a reference in an assignment. However, there is incredible opportunity here to use this tool to help students develop the skills I mentioned in the point above. We create digital citizens not only by giving them the skills to simply operate in a digital society but also the skills they need to truly become effective digital citizens able to think for themselves. Why then is it important to teach these skills…. Well a reflection on the Epic 2014 video that has been around for awhile is probably a good starting point. Even if the future is not as it is depicted in this video, the thoughts contained in it certainly generate a great deal of food for thought….. comments?
Blogged with Flock
As we know, wikipedia can be a great resource when working online. Hyperlinking to a definition or piece of information is helpful. As to the research process and learning – it is not wikipedia or any other resource that we should be debating. It is the question/research task – i.e. the quality and purpose of a learning activity that drives effective pedagogy. Metacognition is the key, and reflective learning is the process we want to support. You made some excellent points in this post Brett! Lets stop blaming the tools and/or the students. Rather, lets focus on ‘information fluency’.
Interesting thoughts… I had not seen the video before. It brought up a few concerns that seem to be common within education fields, but not common enough for any one group to do anything about it. We (as a population) are increasingly taking in more and more snipets, tidbits, sensational paragraphs instead of taking in multiple sides of a topic of importance and digesting it ourselves. I personally do not use wiki for a resource, though I would have to credit a student who did- so long as they balanced it with other sources. It is much the same as a student in a politics class only using Rush Limbaugh as a reference… you have to look at both sides.
The real question is this: how do we get students to think, really think, about where the information being thrown at them is coming from? I suggest the following “lesson” for older students-
Take magazine ads (suitable for their age, preferably out of magazines that are being marketed to them) and give each group of students a few ads. Ask them to look them over quickly. Go around the room and ask “What is your ad for?” students will answer with the typical “mcdonalds”, “x brand shirts”, etc. Then ask this: “Are they using the product as the ad? Or are they trying to sell you the product with something else? Are they trying to sell the shirts with a pretty girl? Are they trying to sell mcdonalds sandwiches with the image if friends hanging out and having fun?” This can (and should) lead to a good class discussion on what methods are being used to sell the product, namely selling the product through use of another comodity (usually sex in our culture).
After they see it for themselves and have it put into words, it is hard to go back. After just teaching this lesson I am more aware of all the ads that come my way. Because the thing is, when validating information of any type, we have to be aware that the information is an advertisement of some kind. There is no such thing as a 100% unbiased writer out there- EVERY THING we read and see is an ad in some manner.
As for teaching how to see the shadows in the background, starting with actual magazine advertisements is easiest, since it is in bright, bold colors and is right there for you to see. After that you can move into other resources, such as articles on wiki or anywhere else.
Students need to be aware of the information that is being thrown at them daily and they need to be able to process it, I agree. Unfortunately, this will not be a skill aquired in the public schools of America if things keep going in the direction they are going in now. There is too much of a push to regurgitate and move on. Make the teacher happy with her words thrown back at her in a new way, make it through the year, move to next teacher. We need to let students explore topics of importance to their lives, topics of interest to them. A good teacher can take any topic and turn it into a hundred learning experiences.
Trishia
I agree with all your comments regarding Brett’s post re the use of new content tools such as Wikipedia. Ths issue is not necessarily about the fact it is being used but how we encourage students to be discerning about any resource that they use.
Garry