Yesterday's blackout of Wikipedia in solidarity with a national protect against SOPA and PIPA has some educators thinking:
Five or six years ago at a faculty meeting a colleague, the sort of person who can only be described as an “old school educator,” argued for a college-wide ban on Wikipedia. Another colleague, a highly distinguished scholar and teacher, looked at me in shock and asked the question we were all thinking:
How can I teach without Wikipedia?
I think the difference is not that one was a good teacher and the other bad nor that one was willing to do the work of teaching and the other not. Indeed, I would wager a bet that a look at my Wikipedia-dependent colleague’s teaching record would show an exceptional educator. It is just that she relies on Wikipedia for many of the facts (what year was Weber born? when did Marx write the Manifesto), and spends her time preparing courses that are not just a collection of facts, but rather a set of analytical tools for exploring the world around us.
By this point in time, nearly all of us rely on Wikipedia for the facts, and not just educators. Want to know if you should buy an Austin Mini? Is Continental Airlines still in business? Thinking about going crabbing? What equipment do you need? Got bedbugs? What about Valentine’s Day? These are all important questions that many of us want or need to know NOW and Wikipedia is there to answer those questions. And I’m not going to even mention how much my teenagers use Wikipedia to complete their homework assignments.
Which leads me to wonder, how many of us out here do rely on Wikipedia for the "little things."
0 comments:
Post a Comment