In case you didn’t see it, The Journal Nature compared 42 entries in Wikipedia to the same 42 entries in Britannica and found the each had four major mistakes, and that on average Britannica had three minor errors in each entry compared to four in Wikipedia. Now, from where I sit, despite the somewhat more awkward and less polished writing, the up to date-ness of Wikipedia is worth the chance of one additional minor error, especially since we’re supposed to be checking all this stuff ourselves anyway, right?
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Very few educators are doing more with wikis in the classroom than Paul Allison. (I think I’ve said that before.) While it hasn’t all been smooth sailing of late (see this post about some recent issues that have cropped up), Paul’s work is worth watching carefully because it’s really showing us what the potential is in a very transparent, honest way.
Case in point: his recent post titled “High School Students (and Teachers) Write Collaboratively on a Wiki“. It’s a major deconstruction (with accompanying screencast!) on one wiki article on “Latino Pride” that was created and edited by his 9th grade students. Here’s the type of detail you get:
Before the article gets to were we find it today, there are a few more interesting changes.
4161: One day, Andrew, a student who had just finished a study of Puerto Rican Independence movements, added a single phrase to section 4.2.
4167: Toward the middle of April, Emily adds her feelings. She hates people who make differences matter.
4171: Emily adds a paragraph to the “Joking comes back to you” section that Anthony had started almost a month earlier.
4178: Chasterie also adds her message about unity, including text, and image, and a new heading.
Really good stuff for anyone who wants to get a handle on what this might look like.
And Paul’s been doing interesting things on his blog of late, including a recent “jogcast” that he recorded while running along the Hudson River. If you want a sense of all the really innovative things he’s doing, listen to Part 3 of his jogcast.
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