In the school library circles where I run, Wikipedia is a downright hot-button issue. Should students access it from school? Should teachers allow students to use it for school research projects? My take? A nice overview, but not an ending place – you gotta use a variety of sources.
Anyway, when I saw that artist Rob Matthews went and took all of Wikipedia’s featured articles (all 5000 pages worth) and created an actual book, my eyes said, “that’s pretty wild”.
You know, you can break that into volumes:
(Thanks to BuzzFeed for the link)
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June 18, 2009 at 9:57 am
Chris Barton
I do love that photo — thanks for posting that, Travis.
As for Wikipedia being a hot-button issue for school librarians, do you know if any have accepted the inevitability of students using Wikipedia as *a* source by encouraging student to create/edit entries on their own, either individually or as a group?
Encouraging students to see what’s involved in finding the right facts and distinguishing facts from “facts,” and to experience firsthand how the Wikipedia community self-monitors high-profile topics while letting errors stand in obscure ones, would seem to be an effective approach to sharpening students’ research skills — much more so than discouraging or prohibiting Wikipedia use altogether.
June 18, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Scope Notes
Chris – Nice to hear from you!
There are certainly plenty of teachers and librarians (or media specialists) that accept Wikipedia as a source. I know of some media specialists have put a link to the site on their school’s research webpage, accepting the inevitability that kids are going to go there.
I have also heard of college professors experimenting with student projects where creating and/or editing Wikipedia entries is part of the assignment. You can read about one here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/29/wikipedia
I think that’s a great idea, but probably more for the higher-ed crowd or possibly an advanced high school class. I’m with you that working to create or edit an entry would be a great exercise in seeing how the site functions, and more valuable than a lot of research projects going on.