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Should Schools Block Sites Like Wikipedia?
Londovir asks: "Recently, our school board made the decision to block Wikipedia from our school district's WAN system. This was a complete block — there aren't even provisions in place for teachers or administrators to input a password to bypass the restriction. The reason given was that Wikipedia (being user created and edited) did not represent a credible or reliable source of information for schools. Should we block sites such as Wikipedia because students may be exposed to misinformation, or should we encourage sites such as Wikipedia as an outlet for students to investigate and determine the validity of the information?"
Then turn around and in the students' social studies classes, teach them about free speech and the horrors of censorship. Be sure to explain what rights an American Citizen has and how many people have demonstrated or fought and died for these rights to remain intact.
Then sit back and wait. Wait for the students to put this together and realize that they don't have to put up with your censorship shit.
When someone holds a demonstration, make a big deal about it and herald them for being an American Citizen. Ask the rest of the students why they waived their right to read Wikipedia as free speech. Who cares why they wanted to read it or even whether they wanted to read it all, just ask them why they waived a right they knew they had. Make them think about it.
Then, if you've got enough time, ask yourself why you've been waiving so many rights in the name of The DMCA, The Patriot Act & The Patriot Act II. Why did you waive your rights in the name of national security and the comfort of huge corporations?
Go ahead, take your time.
If you're advocating blocking Wikipedia in a serious manner, please do explain how you're going to--at the same time--teach the students about the rights they have. It will entertain me, the excuses that fascists come up with always have.
"It's for your own good." just doesn't suffice, in my opinion. Who's determining what's "my own good" again? Oh, you want to. Right. It's called 'responsibility' and it comes with living so let the students have a helping of it.
As for the person asking the question, I don't know about you but I went to a high school where the first thing we were taught is that we are responsible for the information we present in a paper. The student is responsible for citing sources & verifying that the source is reliable. If you can't do that, you're going to end up reading The Onion with either hilarious or catastrophic results. This is a valuable life lesson, let the students learn it early when the consequence is a bad grade instead of a lawsuit. If you told the students Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information, give them an F if they use one single reference from it. How can they argue with you, the instructor?
My work here is dung.
Wikipedia is not the only unreliable source of information out there. Hell, blocking it risks creating an atmosphere where students become complacent and trust every source they come across - after all, everything they're exposed to has already been vetted by an external body!
No, we need to teach students how to recognize good sources and bad sources, how to research, and what citation means. Failure to do so will just create yet another generation of research-i-tards that can't find information to save their life.
That is one insightful post.
You, sir, are a genius.
You are one of the few that "gets it".
Virtually the entirety of the web (and, for that matter, a lot of the non-fiction, dead-tree books you'll find in most school libraries) are not a "credible or reliable source of information for schools". OTOH, schools ought to be teaching students to evaluate sources that have the kind of systematic problems that frequently encountered sources like Wikipedia has, and how to use them (e.g., as a gateway or refresher) to get value, and when not to use them, and not to use them exclusively. They ought not be blocking access to information on the basis that it is not up to some gold standard of reliability.
Now, there may be other valid reasons for blocking access to Wikipedia, but the reliability and credibility one is, from my perspective, pretty stupid.
(If there is a problem with students too-frequently citing—or plagiarizing—Wikipedia, the solution to that ought to be appropriate, well-communicated grading standards when it comes to appropriate sources and appropriate use and citation of those sources.)
This is ridiculous, I can't count the times Wikipedia has given me a reliable, quick and advanced source of information. If anything they should link it from the homepage.
"Oh boy"
There seems to be this prevailing opinion among schools that the information on wikipedia is of such poor quality as to be considered outright lies. Yes there is some mis-information present on wikipedia, but the same could be said of virtually any source of information. Wikipedia, like any source should be cross-referenced with other sources, but it also serves as an excellent initial source of information, and is often one of the most up to date sources you can find. In reference to modern events, both political, and scientific, it represents the best resource short of dedicated peer journals (which are often hard to find, and even harder to search). Finally, censorship of any kind on the internet, particularly in schools which are usually understaffed and poorly designed in terms of IT is a joke that can be easily circumvented by students with basic computer skills and motivation to do so.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
People are generally up in arms over banned books because they limit exposure of the students to someone else's idea of 'dangerous ideas'. This, on the other hand appears to be encouraging students to know the source of their knowlege first, which is commendable - although I think that a policy of allowing access, but prohibiting reference in a paper to Wikipedia would be more effective. I often use Wikipedia as a good starting point to drill back to the primary sources.
The kneejerk 'blocking is bad' reaction may be justified, but they do have a point...just fell down on implementation
I would like to see the same board underline how cooperate owned news media, and human written reference material are that much more reliable that partially peer reviewed, but publicly refutable medium. I am in no way denying the obvious problems with Wikipedia.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
No matter how poor a source Wikipedia may be (and in a moment I'll address that), it should be the decision of the classroom teacher whether and how to accept it as a legitimate source, just as the classroom teacher is the arbiter of whether a citation from Weekly World News counts for as much as one from the New York Times. It is the classroom teacher who should be the one explaining the difference to the students.
Second, we all know that Wikipedia is often an excellent first source of basic information on a topic. Me, I've got a Ph.D. and a book published with a university press, and I constantly refer to Wikipedia to ground myself in things. Which is not to say I'd cite it as an authority. Again, it's the classroom teacher whose responsibility it is to explain the difference.
I expect this is the first of about 1000 comments that will make essentially the same points. I hope that some sense of this can be conveyed to the school board in question.
Anybody can create a webpage. Anybody can edit a wikipedia entry. This means members of the "Flat Earth Society" can edit the entry on planetary circumference. If a student is trying to get some basic data, there's a good chance it's in wikipedia. If it's controversial, i.e. Global Warming, a student might get conflicting viewpoints. Would you like to explain BOTH sides of the abortion issue to a first grader? That's good for a high school or college level paper, where basic research skills have been grasped. It's not good for Middle School/Junior High and younger. There's a reason why 2nd graders don't read Tolstoy, and there's a reason why High Schoolers shouldn't get credit for a report on "Clifford, the Big Red Dog".
Because you can't trust it completely? That is true of every source. I think the rise of wikipedia is a great thing, if it teaches people to be skeptical of any source they use. I've been saying this for a while.
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They should block MySpace instead!!!
I swear, Funk and Wagnall's, Britannica, and World Book must be stepping up with the lobby money. This isn't the first time I've read about the "inaccuracy" of Wikipedia recently.
Regardless of whether the information is accurate or not, Wikipedia is an excellent source because many times it has references listed a student can use as a basis for his/her own research. Teachers should not allow any type of encyclopedia to be used as a source, since, its supposed to be generalized knowledge on a subject. In fact, a great feature of Wikipedia is that editors have the ability to post a warning on an article stating that it needs to be cleaned up or that references need to be found to support the article.
Banning Wikipedia doesn't accomplish much. Encyclopedias, even in their paper form, have never been the most accurate sources for information. Compare a World Book article to a Britannica article on the same subject, and there will be notable differences. It all depends on the author, and the sources used to write the article.
I've found entries in Wikipedia on topics I have not found anywhere else, and many times followed an external link to a site that has more information on the topic. It would be a shame to take that ability away from students.
A better alternative to outright blocking would be to pass all Wikipedia hits through a proxy which, when articles are retrieved, modifies the returned HTML code to insert under the article heading the following words in large boldface: "This article may contain severe bias and/or inaccuracies".
I have seen a few pages on Wikipedia that contain downright inaccuracy. I've edited them myself, only to see my changes promptly reverted out by a few misinformed zealots who keep the pages on their watchlists.
The prevailing philosophy at Wikipedia is that a falsehood with higher-profile references is better than truth with lower-profile references.
If I were not an expert in the subjects concerned, I would have no way of knowing that the articles were inaccurate, and would tend to believe them.
All this said, my opinion is that outright censorship is reprehensible, but accuracy warnings are absolutely essential.
Also - there are a great number of pages on Wikipedia, such as pages on science subjects which by their nature do not arouse into debate or controversy, which are extremely accurate, well-written and well-researched.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Publishing a book is not really that difficult. There are thousands of complete idiots who have done it and will do it again in the future. If schools really think that all material that is not absolutely reliable should be off-limits to students, they might as well just ban access to all available information, books, journals, and the net.
Wikipedia is probably not that different in accuracy from the textbooks most schools in the U.S. are using. Here's the deal: teachers need to teach critical thinking more than rote memorization of facts. If they're not teaching kids to question the textbooks (and the teachers themselves!), then they're already guilty of what they're afraid of using wikipedia would do.
:)
Wikipedia is *great*, as is the web and internet in general, for nothing more than bringing up aspects of a topic that someone wouldn't suspect even existed. Check out a topic on wikipedia and notice aspects of a topic that wouldn't occur to you - then research those aspects using whatever sources you want.
The advantages of Wikipedia far outweigh any data inaccuracies - that it's constantly updated, and has a far wider range of viewpoints being represented than any textbooks.
If you teach critical thinking to the kids, then you downplay wikipedia's weaknesses while leaving the strengths.
IMO, though, so think about it for yourself.
I've seen plenty of vandals from school IP addresses on Wikipedia. Clever little things like randomly inserting "poop" into articles -- hahahahahahaha! "poop"! I said poop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, sorry.
because googling will offer much better accuracy-
just read the cites on wikipedia and find the books yourself, dont cite wikipedia.
Yep, blocking it is stupid. But you should be reminding the kids that anyone can post anything on the Internet.
So just wrap a frame around the Wikipedia pages with the words "Any doofus can put anything up on the Internet. Don't be dumber than the doofus."
Although the content on wikipedia may be a half truth often the articles cite other resources from where the information was collected which helps to build a web of data. As long as students are informed on how to select accurate resources for their data there is no problem. Wikipedia is an excellent source for small trivia and quick, though sometimes incorrect information (thanks Colbert).
"only if they also block FOX, CNN and MSNBC"
Seriously, is wikipedia any more correct or incorrect than any other source of information.
Schools should absolutely block Wikipedia and sites like Wikipedia.
In fact, schools should do one better. They should start by blocking ALL WEB SITES. Next, they should whitelist and allow only sites on which ALL the information has been verified as 100% accurate by the school staff.
This information checking should be done independently by every school throughout the nation. To avoid bias by the teachers for their favourite subjects, the fact checking should only be done by IT staff.
Further, the results of fact checking shall be collected in a centralized, proprietary database, contracted to the highest bidder. Sites shall only be added to the whitelist once they have been unanimously approved by ALL the schools.
To avoid changes to the verified content, a parallel "intranet" system shall be created with static copies of the verified pages, and only these shall be accessible by students.
Damn, I should be a school board policymaker!
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
This is messed up on so many levels. I don't know where to begin!
FIRST of all, they might as well block the entire Internet. I can put up a web page claiming to be by Smarty McPants, Ph.D, that says smoking is good for you. I can even Googlebomb it up so (for a while, anyways) any relevant search shows my page in a top spot. Just because something is on the Internet does not make it credible! Are they going to block Google too?
Heck, I could print out a booklet on my bubblejet that looks authoritative, but that doesn't make it true! Establishing credibility and using multiple sources is a required part of the research process! There is never, ever, any single source you can refer to as definitive when you are looking at a subject in depth.
SECOND of all, Wikipedia has a (loosely enforced, but enforced nonetheless) policy of citing sources. So while it may not be super-reliable given that a vandal could have been by in the past 30 seconds, it is still a valuable research tool... given you know how to use it (ie. a copy-paste of the article does not count as "research" by any stretch of the imagination).
LASTLY, what exactly is "reliable" anyways? Plenty of textbooks have errors by the handfuls. And really, if they are going to block Wikipedia, they'd best block Fox News too. There are huge examples of innacuracies and lack of research from Fox, like the story about how Barack Obama went to "terrorist school".
The idiots who made this policy obviously don't know anything about the Internet, or information, or research. And we wondedr why the educational system is failing and the US is falling behind in the science sector!
Gaaahh!
nothing at all.
educational supervision and guidance should handle the issue, assuming you are getting teachers who are worth hiring.
part of life's journey is running across the odd "mein kampf" or Imus webcast. just like seeing the dirty old man flashing under the railroad bridge on the way to Billy's birthday party, seeing 20 contenders on the local TV news for your presidential primary, and watching the second world trade tower fall live on TV.
shit happens. you need to learn what it is, and how to cope.
banning the only fully current, if occasionally torpedoed, online encyclopedia is not how you develop coping skills. it's part of the way to develop useless little hothouse flowers who can't think for themselves.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Schoolchildren should not be using computers anyway. Research shows that computer use has a negligible-to-negative impact on children's performance in school. Schoolchildren should not have access to the internet. The internet is for porn and filesharing.
If any site is blocked at the school, does policy then follow that students are forbidden to use Wikipedia as a referenced source for any report or essay? And what is the penalty for doing so? Or can they reference it but must do so not as a factual reference but more as they would for quoting an editorial piece?
Especially those that agree with you. The reason is very simple, if you accept as fact something because it is what you like to hear, you are far more likely to accept lies.
If you are a X-winger and read a X-wing newspaper a lie told by that newspaper has a far greater chance of being accepted. Same goes in reverse, if someone says something that you do NOT agree with, you owe it to yourselve to have a healthy distrust, of YOURSELVE!
Always be willing to accept that what you think is true is wrong, and that what you think is wrong is true.
NEVER trust a single source of information to give you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
So Wikipedia is an excellent tool for teaching. Teach students to ALWAYS check the correctness of information, just because you read an article in a "respectable" newspaper doesn't mean you don't have to check the facts.
And if you encounter something you think is false, still be willing to check it out, just in case your information is in fact wrong.
If you manage to teach students this, you might even be able to teach some the next step. Just because A is a lie does not make B a truth. Just because the US lied about WMD does not mean Saddam told the truth. Just because the axis powers were scum does not mean that the allies were/are the nicest guys on the face of the earth.
You might even get people to understand that because someone is the enemy of my enemy does NOT mean they are my friend, and even that someone who doesn't agree with you is NOT necesarlly your enemy.
OR we could just spoonfeed students the accepted facts and be done with it. After all it worked for thousands of years.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
...to teach students how to research and verify information.
Pick a page and independently verify it from "more reliable" sources. Write a new page as a project. There are some great possibilities here.
Seriously, it's not like they didn't give you a easy way to verify if something is credible.What investigation? The citations are right on the page.
If they aren't there, one is better off looking at other sources for information.
Perhaps the schools should buy some accounts for the entire school to access sites like Britannica? -- I get the feeling they're too cheap to-do so.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
If you're going to start keeping students away from sources of misinformation you're probably going to have to fire a lot of teachers.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Schools should start a wikipedia about their local area.
Step 1: accounts and passwords are created, additional account creation is blocked
Step 2: demonstrate all edits are traceable to an account
Step 3: you are responsible for your account security and all edits done by your account
Step 4: release
Step 5: edit and disipline
That will teach a lot.
You can find even more disinformation via google. And consider, I just now pulled up a random phrase out of the blue -- "darfur history" -- and gave it to google. The wikipedia article is #1.
And, oh my gosh, if you click on google's "Cached" link you get a copy of the wiki article, bypassing any attempts at blocking the terrifying wikipedia monster. Complete with the disclaimer "This article documents a current event; Information may change rapidly as the event progresses" which warns people to think twice before believing it, unlike what other media outlets do. Teaching kids to question what they read???
Furthermore, if I enter "why school boards are stupid" I get 1,770,000 links that explain why.
Forget wikipedia. Google must be stopped.
You're missing why the students are willing to give up their right to wikipedia: if teachers can't check wikipedia at school it's much harder to notice that they just copied their paper from wikipedia :P
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They'll ban Wikipedia but put Of Pandas and People in their display case.
even though this is the wrong way to teach information literacy.
Part of me wants to say that if you block the Wikipedia, you really should have a simple white list. These are the sites you are allowed to visit, because we've checked them out and they are reliable.
But the thing is, the Wikipedia really is extraordinarily useful. And therefore very, very easy to misuse. Overall the Wikipedia is remarkably reliable. In a some cases its pretty mediocre, and obviously in a few cases it can go horribly, terribly wrong.
Overall, its a tremendous benefit to have Wikipedia. But you have to bring a skeptical attitude or you can get burned. The truth is you really ought to bring a skeptical viewpoint to the Wikipedia, but many schools aren't in the business of teaching skepticism. Knowing how to handle a site like Wikipedia is part of media literacy. You should use same skills you would use to evaluate a network news show, or a book, your American History textbook, or even an "official" encylopedia.
So, what this really amounts to is admission that the school is not prepared to teach its students critical reading. They really ought to teach that, but if they can't, then students might in some cases be lead wildly astray by Wikipedia. Perhaps for this sort of school, a white list would be better, or maybe even just giving up on net access altogether.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
As more evidence that Wikipedia is the new Google, these days whenever I search on Google, the Wikipedia entry is in the top three hits.
Blocking Wikipedia in 2007 is like blocking Google in 2003 or blocking AltaVista in 1998.
schools block wikipedia's access to students.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Because blocking sites works so well. Esecially CC licenced ones.
I'm sure the students will go for a much more reliable source, such as Answers.com. Or google's cache of wikipedia. Or Wikpipedia itself via a proxy. Or wikipedia on their home computers.
God forbid that learning about reliability of sources should be part of the education curriculum.
Geeze, it never ceases to amaze me the chest-thumping some people do about their rights, without even knowing what those rights are. They think their amendments apply to anything except the government, and gives them some right to troll a board or to read Slashdot/Wikipedia/whatever at work/school/whatever.
Learn your _real_ rights, lemming, because believing in such stupidities is how you lose those rights. Since you ask that, yes, ask yourself why so many rights were so easily taken away. Because 90% of the population doesn't even know them. They think the constitution gives them a right to troll a privately own message board, or to slander the neighbour, or to cheat on WoW, or whatever. Joe Random Voter doesn't even comprehend that those rights, or that they apply to the government (au contraire, he thinks his free speech applies to everything _but_ his government), or what they really were supposed to protect. He's too busy exercising his imaginary rights, to care about the _real_ ones.
Here's the actual first amendment text: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Get this:
- It's about laws passed by Congress. Wake me up when Congress makes a law that forbids you to say something at all, not when an IT department blocks Wikipedia on their network. I don't see anywhere there that students are forbidden to read Wikipedia at home, or that police will take anyone to Guantanamo for reading Wikipedia. Just that it's blocked on the school network. That's it.
- It's _only_ about your relationship to the Congress and laws. It doesn't mean anyone else than Congress should have _any_ obligation to you. Not even public schools or government departments owe you jack shit on their premises or network. Whether it's free speech, or the right to peacefully demonstrate, or to petition for redress, get this: noone else has an obligation to provide you with the means or time for it. Your boss or school do not have to participate in a demonstration, don't have to pay for your bandwidth to exercise your free speech, nor let you spend your work/class time surfing the net. They don't have to do _anything_ for you. It doesn't even say they can't fire you for it.
- "freedom of press" only applies to those who own the press. It just says that noone will lock-up the Wikipedia owners for being anti-Bush. It does _not_ say that anyone has an obligation buy and deliver the New York Times to your doorstep, or Wikipedia to your desktop. If your boss or the school principal doesn't want to carry those packets to you, tough shit, it's up to you to get them in your free time.
- sorta unrelated, but that's another confusion that chest-thumpers do: no, it also doesn't mean anyone has to publish or carry your speech either. If you want to see your stuff in print, buy a newspaper. If you want them on a server, buy a server. And if the IT department doesn't route your precious corrections to Wikipedia, tough shit, get your own Internet connection at home.
And spare me the emotional demagogue bullshit about people who died for those rights. Get this: noone fought for your right to have the company's/school's/whatever IT department carry your packets.
And no, aggression, isn't a substitute for competence, btw. Just calling everyone who might disaggree a "fascist" preemptively, doesn't excuse you for not having a clue what you're talking about.
Geeze...
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If even the teachers are blocked what is stopping them from copying or paraphrasing from wikipedia and then cite a fake source the teacher can't easily check.
And like others said it IS a good start point and usually has several other references listed. I suppose it would be better to GOOGLE for some references ?!?! How can it be any worse than the card catalog at the library, those certainly were not guarenteed to be credible, you had to determine that on your own.....just like you should with what the wiki says....
Maybe they can dumb it down a bit more and predefine the sources and the data and see if everyone can correctly copy the page number for the reference footnote.
Unless it is a source more likely than not to give bad info ii can't see blocking it like that. Perhaps a lesson on primary and secondary sources, etc.
Even then i could quote from several prestigous peer-reviewed journels that had bad info at some point.
Now if we can convince
They should not block Wikipedia, for sure, but if the child gets something wrong from their research, they should be marked down since they didn't do their research properly. Even Encyclopedia Britannica can be wrong- if they find a discrepancy between two sources, they should be required to investigate additional sources until they at least gather a consensus, and properly attribute it. Making a single observation and declaring it the absolute truth is faulty science, no reason that online research should be any different.
If a student turns in a research paper citing Wikipedia they should get an F-.
...because they show pictures of boobies. And won't SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!11!!oneone!!OMGWTFBBQ!!!!!
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Do they ban google as well? How about about.com, or lycos, or dmoz?
I guess if the only place kids can use the Internet for research is at home or the public library, that'll save money on that pesky school library and Internet connection.
I'm amazed and confused that a school district would do all that without having the decency to contact the Wikimedia Foundation first. To the original poster: please have your district's officials get in touch.
Wikipedia is not a primary reference for anything other than itself. It's entirely appropriate for teachers to tell students that it's not a primary source. This is true of encyclopedias in general. Actual primary sources should be citable/referencable.
Wikipedia, as a summary of a subject, and a pointer to related subjects, and list of primary source references, is reasonably accurate, to within a near-tie with accuracy found in commercial encyclopedias. And it includes primary source links more consistently than commercial encyclopedias...
Yep, because things like World Book are _bastions_ of good information*.
*(Yes, this is an excerpt from the actual World Book Encyclopedia(TM) that I grew up with... absolutely no propaganda there... nope, not none.)
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Ah, the old chestnut: I love something and thing it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, so when The Man comes down against it - it must be a conspiracy.
I find it far more likely that as the reputation of Wikipedia spreads, so does awareness of it's deep and systemic shortcomings and problems. (As well as the weakness of arguments in favor of it.)
Wikipedia is a POS. It's only a little more reliable than what's scribbled on a bathroom wall, and much less persistant.
My first summer job was selling encyclopedias door to door.
I sold three sets my first week. That was pretty good money... then I went home, and looked through the sample volume they gave us.
It was horrible. All kinds of errors of fact. Really bad ones.
I couldn't sell any more. I stuck it out another week but got myself booted out for bitching about the company and the trainers who didn't seem to care if they were peddling junk to another trainee. Which was stupid, but I was a teenager. Doing stupid things is in the teenager EULA.
Anyway, "real" encyclopedias can go horribly horribly wrong too. The question is not "can Wikipedia be wrong" but "how often is it wrong?" And "Can you crosscheck"? And "what happens when it is wrong"?
If this is any indication of the board's overall mindset, kids in your district are gonna turn out real stupid..
... schools ought to be teaching students to evaluate sources that have the kind of systematic problems that frequently encountered sources like Wikipedia has ...
You misunderstand the purpose of public schools.
- It is not to teach people how to be functioning, self-reliant adults capable of making informed decisions and resisting attempts to manipulate them.
- It is to indoctrinate them and paralyze their ability to self-inform and resist manipulation, turning them into easy-to-herd, standardized, branded, cattle.
(I'd have said "sheep" but you don't brand them - unlike the output of public schools, who are "branded" with accents to identify their place in the brave new world order.)
Meanwhile the children of the ruling class are educated in private institutions too expensive and exclusive for the general mob to afford or pass entry requriements.
This is why, just for starters, they ban Wikipedia but mandate viewing of "An Inconvenient Truth", and teach "Rain Forest Math" rather than arithmetic.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What does the NEA http://www.nea.org/index.html or textbook Lobby http://www.associatedcontent.com/ think? Yep, those are the experts you should be asking.
Just teach the kids that things they read on Wikipedia (or just about anywhere else on the web) may not be 100% accurate and that they should check multiple sources. Teach them common sense and make them think instead of just shielding them from everything.
At my school, you can't visit many webpages on chemistry "keyword found manga", and any window title containing 'paint' shuts down. You can't google for 'oil paints'. I don't understand why people who use the computers comply.
Should we block sites such as Wikipedia because students may be exposed to misinformation, or should we encourage sites such as Wikipedia as an outlet for students to investigate and determine the validity of the information?"
the answer is: neither.
get your goddamned hands off the students' bits.
as much as its a human freedom for you to call any phone number you like on your phone, so should anyone on the internet be able to hit ANY ip address or website.
keep your cotton-pickin' damned hands OFF other peoples' bits. they are not YOURS, they are there as a common resource, as the air or water supply is.
(yes, this net-nanny attitude is on the rise and it just annoys the hell out of me!)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I mean, it would be a shame if students could just go to some other site that carried the exact same articles.
Well, thats your grade for poor logic. It is the schools WAN, they can set the standard.
Care to argue it from the point that the WAN is owned by the school, and just as the school will restrict who you call with their phones (computers) they can restrict where you go?
or you can argue it from Wikipedia being a good/bad source.
My thoughts? Sure, but ban it as a source for term papers/essays.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Wikipedia needs to go ahead and block all elementary and most high schools from editing the site.
Why? Most of the vandalism I have to revert comes from US elementary schools. It seems like people below a certain age simply don't have the maturity to handle the power to edit content, without vandalising it in some way. Children old enough to be able to contributed can go ahead and create accounts to edit.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Wikipedia beats the hell outta most school textbooks, heck, even college textbooks by a large margin.
Read radical news here
what is "valid"? who determines what is valid?
a clique at a university? certainly, if you are talking about the hard sciences, there is truth, and then there is not truth. but when you get to the soft sciences, and all aspects of knowledge softer than this, what is truth is fashionable from one clique at one university to the next
this is why we don't try people by experts in criminal court, why we try people by a jury of their peers: at first examination, if you ask a laymen to examine genetic evidence versus an expert, you would expect the expert to be able to be a better judge of guilt or innocence based on such a type of evidence
the truth though, is that those we call "experts" are ALWAYS wrapped up in an agenda. such that when delivering a verdict, are they serving their agenda? or the case before them? the impartiality of experts cannot be depended upon, because they are already so involved in a given subject matter
in the defense of experts, anyone passionate about a given subject matter enough to become an expert in it in the first place HAS to have an agenda to push, only because they care about the subject matter so much!
so it's hard to be an expert and impartial at the same time. meanwhile, your average joe blow on the street can be depended upon to be impartial simply because they are so unfamiliar with the issues, and can be educated by the experts enough so that they have enough knowledge to adequately weigh the evidence. and thus our legal system, and why a jury of peers is better than a jury of experts
likewise, when we evaluate the "validity" of wikipedia, i submit to you that what a bunch of joe blows write on the internet is more impartial, as arrived at democratically, than what is valid as determined by a clique at a university. simply because random people on the net have no cohesive agenda, while a clique at a university does have an agenda
i consider wikipedia MORE valid than traditional sources of knowledge. simply because it's democratic. and if you dispute this notion, be careful what you say here: this is slashdot, champion of linux, linux being perhaps the ultimate expression of the superiority of the bazaar over the cathedral
random voices in a marketplace are a more valid source of truth than monklike scribes at a monastry: it's all about who has the agenda to push, and who doesn't
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If I were still a student I would be writting my next essay on the dangers of smoking while only using credable information provided by tobacco companies. Or perhaps on global waming and only site studies provided by oil companies etc etc.
It would be quite fun(ny) to do, and perhaps people would get it within thier thick heads that practically no sources are not without thier biases.
How does that old saying go... Believe nothing of what you hear and half of what you see.
If we can all agree, it might be true. Right?
Wiki-anything is probably the best example of this sort of thinking there is. This is extraordinarly bad for schools and for people that do not have the capabilities to really think for themselves. This isn't something that can be trained - it is something that you pretty much have or don't have. Most people don't have it, leading to why we have popularly elected tyrants.
Lots of people here saying that Wikipedia has about the same level of accuracy as textbooks. They clearly have no understanding of how textbooks are created and reviewed for all but college level. Yes, there can be problems. But the level of review by both professionals and educators is pretty darn high.
Wikipedia isn't a valid source for anything - it is a collection of popular stuff and a clear insight into what people consider important. If it wasn't important to them, it wouldn't have gotten written. If other people don't agree, it is edited or deleted to make sure that the author population agrees with what is there. How can this be considered to be anything usable for academic purposes?
Actually, if one was doing a report on Britney Spears it would be a good place to start. If you wanted to find out what the name of the person that was on American Idol that sang "I'm so hot" it might be useful. If you needed to find out where Irving Berlin was born I wouldn't trust it any further than I could throw the monitor. Yes, I looked at the entry and the discussion and it is pretty humorous.
I guess blocking it for children below 6th grade or so might be reasonable. I would hope it would be worth spending a little time make sure that every grade after that understood how Wikipedia is constructed, why it cannot be trusted without carefully examining pages and discussions and why any reviewed resource is better. Children have to understand what is on web pages and how little of it is factual and how much of it is someone's opinion. Well-meaning opinion I am sure, but still not factual.
Here's my take:
I was banned from using the Encyclopedia Britannica during middle and high-school. It was not about the quality of information - most of it is quite reliable, but rather the depth of information. If I know absolutely nothing about a topic, Wikipedia is a good place to start. As good as the Encyclopedia, as far as I can tell, and much more portable. However, I know that reading one Wikipedia article (just like one Britannica aritcle) does not create knowledge or research with depth. What you can do with the Encyclopedia is to do a book report on Valley Forge from the factual content of the article, and then append a bunch of citations as if you'd read them. The goal is to get a student to find a couple of sources on the topic and read them. However, I don't buy the argument that Wikipedia is innacurate DEREK IS GAY as a general rule.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
The stupidity of schools and teachers is sometimes truly amazing. Bad luck that it is idiots like these who are supposed to actually teach others.
But thanks for asking, asking even the most stupid question is a beginning: no you should not block Wikipedia. No you should not encourage using it. No you should, in general, not give the impression that everything can be solved by a simple rule.
You should do what teachers are supposed to do: give students the means and ability, the knowledge and the judgment to decide by and for themselves on a case to case basis when it might be a good idea and when not -- and why.
Maybe work that into your biology and politics classes. Demonstrate. Discuss.
In a word: use your brain, for a change.
Great! After having just returned from Communist China (where they deliberately block WikiPedia) the USA now has school districts blocking WikiPedia. Woa to all you dimwits who say "This is for the good of the children." What are you thinking??? Part of the 'learning' process is to be able to acquire data and distinguish that which is accurate from that which is misleading. That is what makes us 'human'. If we do not teach our children how to distinguish the truth from made up lies and how to check a theory using multiple alternate sources then we end up cripling our future generations. It is precisely the free and open access to information that we in the USA enjoy (and that China lacks) that makes this country and our students some of the most creative and imaginative in the world. NEVER destroy that freedom!
Possibly the best I've ever seen. Not as a source for a research paper, but for background knowledge. Someone mentioned "eugenics" in one of my classes and I realized I wasn't really sure what it was. Sure, I could use a dictionary, but wikipedia gives a bit more useful detail.
Just put "wikipedia doesn't count as a source" on research paper prompts (which you'll have to do anyway, because believe it or not a couple of the students may use the internet at home!) and I'd go so far as to encourage use of wikipedia to learn about things you don't know much about. Hell, you could probably say "encyclopedias don't count as sources" (something many of my highschool teachers have said) if you don't want to bring attention to wikipedia.
But seriously I can understand blocking myspace and facebook, which are social networking tools, at a school... 99.9% of use wouldn't have anything to do with learning. For the person who is doing a project on "social networking" they can do research at home or even get special permission from the school... use a teacher's account if your IT department can't be bothered with it. (The IT dept at my school was one person for the entire county and she would have done it if our school blocked anything but porn. It would take a few days but she would do it). Wikipedia on the other hand is an unorthodox encyclopedia. It exists for spreading knowledge. To block it at a school citing educational reasons would be stupid. (no offense)
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
as a resource Wiki is not as 'safe' a source of information as a reviewed textbook, if the facts in Wiki are wrong and there are exam questions which the student gets wrong because of Wiki, who is to blame? I wouldn't portray Wiki as evil, but as it is, a database of information submitted by the community and it maay be true, false or otherwise.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Who says I copied? Who says I didn't write the Wikipedia article?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And prove that the text books they give to students are all 100% accurate. Besides being poorly written, textbooks will contain inaccuracies, mistakes, and I'm sure there are a few lies in there too. Ever wonder why certain subjects become more interesting when you're older? It isn't just you becoming more mature and more interested in these subjects, it's because schools buy crappy textbooks written by people with an uncanny ability to make interesting things seem boring.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
Wikipedia is blocked as it may contain inaccurate information?
But you're not blocking the rest of the internet that can contain anything, from anybody and is subject to no review at all?
Maybe in the board's concern they should extend their block to any site that's ever reported incorrect or disputed information - this would cover pretty much every site in existence - religion, politics, history blah blah.
Whilst Wikipedia shouldn't be taken as gospel (well actually they gospels shouldn't be taken as gospel either, but I digress), if you dip beneath the front page and examine the edits it actually allows you to see most sides of the debate on most topics.
Who says I copied? Who says I didn't write the Wikipedia article?
:P
The contribution history
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If teachers now are anywhere near as incompetent as they were when I went to school, they're still the best source of outright lies, insults, and propaganda out there. I mean, c'mon, do I have to invoke Godwin's law here? Most "teachers" are barely competent in the subjects they're supposed to teach, and many of them were openly antagonistic when someone tried to correct them. On a scale of Wikipedia to Hitler, teachers are awfully close to Hitler. You can't correct them, no matter how wrong they are. When they start going on tirades about the unrelated topic of their choice, there's nothing anyone can do. Trust me, if I learned history from Wikipedia instead of from school teachers, I would have learned a few dates and not the names of a few sports teams.
"Actually, the use of marijuana only makes a musician think he is playing better"? Was that from the 1966 World Book? It sounds pretty unprofessional, and I suppose it doesn't cite any sources to back the claim up...
I use Wikipedia all the time, even when writing cited research papers. Although anyone can edit a page, I can jump straight to referring links at the bottom and read information from "trustworthy" sources. Besides, by reading a Wikipedia entry (even if it potentially contains misinformation) I'm able to prepare for writing by learning more about my topic at hand. In this way I get the best of both worlds: I have worthy references for my paper and a wealth of information to bank on when writing.
Can I trust a scientific paper from the tobacco lobby about how smoking is safe? Can i trust a report on slashdot about how windows is completely unsuitable for any business use?
Of course I can't trust these sources, but that doesn't mean they aren't valuable sources of information.
One of the most useful things I learned in school is that no source is unbiased and that few things are every completely accurate and complete. Once you know that, you can start to evaluate information based on the source and use it appropriately. I would never cite wikipedia in a paper, but i would absolutely use it to find citable sources.
Wow. You take my breath away. How does one respond to such an incredible warping of the purpose of school? What the hell do TAXPAYERS have to do with it?
I thought school was supposed to be about the education of students, for their benefit, that of their parents, of other citizens, and of society and democracy at large.
Not that I think schools actually do this; I would say on balance they achieve the opposite. But to actually state that the goal of public education is the efficient satisfaction of taxpayers (not citizens, parents, or God-forbid students; learning, citizenship, and the improvement of students are nowhere to be found) is so ass-backwards it's virtually guaranteed to never achieve actual education or fulfill the interests of students.
Of course, to the extent that you're a politico or functionary dependen on an industrial system of public education for your power and income, your characterization of education may be in your personal interest. What you wrote thoroughly confuses the private benefit of public servants with the broader public interest. I sincerely hope this is an accident of your writing and a product of having to cope with an imperfect system, not what you actually believe or practice.
None of which is to argue that schools are better with or without MySpace. Addressing that question requires a much more thorough analysis than the caricature you've presented here: of what we as a society want our schools to achieve, of the degree to which school should be isolated from real life and of the practical questions of how school can teach students to function in their actual lives, of whether it's better to try to change the student than to train the teacher, of the potential and actual nature of social sites (socialization is, after all, one of the main things we want out of schools), and of the practical dimensions of any relevant policy. In other words, I don't have an answer but I don't think you've made an argument.
... so let me get this straight .. wikipedia is an untrustworthy source of information.. well how about the views promoted in government pamphlets, "Educational programs" on immaterial property rights (by the RIAA) and other opinionated crap that is regularly distributed in schools.. ?
I trust any of our current politicians less than I feel I can trust wikipedia.
I'm about to become a parent and theres no way I would like my child to learn about the world in a country where they can see endless hours of violence on tv - but they're not trusted enough to read wikipedia when at school.
I'm thinking Singapore or Dubai. I hear that the education available in Singapore is excellent but that the education in Dubai is excellent _and_ cheap. Anyone got any tips for someone about to abandon this sinking vessel ?
Why not teach students to double-check and triple-check their sources for chissakes? They are going to need to know how to do that in real life. Wikipedia should be used for what it is; a collaborative collection of knowledge which is subject to change. This is just dumb.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
The should block Wikipedia from both student and teachers.
They should not cave in to pressure from teachers or parents, they should stick to their guns.
Because the students need first get used to being screwed by then man. And second and more importantly, they need to learn to subvert the system while they're young; it will help them in the real world.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Yep, it was the 1966 World Book.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Sure, Wikipedia isn't always that credible. But nearly every single major article has references and external links at the end. Wikipedia isn't an appropriate source to cite, but it is a great place to start researching. I like to think of it like a launchpad, not a source. Schools should not block Wikipedia, but instruct students to take it with a grain of salt and use the information properly.
One thing that wasn't mentioned was whether the school board had a hidden agenda behind blocking Wikipedia. Anyone who argues that Wikipedia's facts are skewed, my rebuttal is the mainstream news is no better either. There's so much spin that you can't even tell what is the truth anymore. What I've often observed in other similar cases is the detractors have something to fear, and that is why they denounce it. Really, if you want to teach critical thinking, censorship isn't the way to do it. You need to teach people how to think for themselves.
Personally, I like the discussion boards on slashdot is there is always an exchange of ideas and open debate which is what we need more of. This helps develop critical thinking.
Education should develop the students' critical faculties and prepare them for a real world in which fact and fiction often cohabitate. If you think that Wikipedia is inaccurate, have a good look at Encarta - what about newspapers? And we should definitely never expose our dear young pupils to television (horrors!) This is one of the worst kinds of censorship: santizing and bounding the knowledge we're allowed to have. It is the flip side of PR people paid to "correct" and beautify Wikipedia content. Both fit within the realm of evil in the modern world.
No - they shouldn't block Wikipedia.= http%3A//www.textbookreviews.org/California_announ cement.html%3Fshownews and http://school.familyeducation.com/education-and-st ate/history/38673.html or do you believe that Daniel Boone was in the Continental Congress and that Sputnik was a nuclear warhead?)
Instead students should be taught critical thinking skills and how to be skeptical of any information.
Textbooks are full of errors (see http://amasci.com/miscon/miscon.html, http://www.textbookreviews.org/index.html?content
Wikipedia can be an excellent source of information. It is typically much more current than other sources and had great introductory articles on many technical subjects. The links it has can often lead to further research. The page history can provide insight into underlying controversy.
Clearly, Wikipedia is not perfect: it can be gamed, like Stephen's Colbert's drive to increase the number of elephants in Africa; is subject to fanatic bias; and what's the popular conception isn't necessarily the truth.
Instead students should learn to question everything, parse the logical structures, and not rely on single source for information. In this way Wikipedia can be an excellent teaching tool.
"Intelligence is like four wheel drive, it gets you stuck in more remote places" --Garrison Kiellor
...publishes their article on goatse.cx, I'll have to put my trust in Wikipedia that their citation is accurate.
(heh, captcha for this post is "naughty".)
This is about the most stupid decision I've ever heard about. US is turning into a Christian Taliban Version.
Blocking Wikipedia is a pretty stupid move. While Wikipedia's articles are usually poorly written and sometimes of questionable accuracy, it can still be a great starting point for research, or a great way to get a quick bit of information on a subject in more detail than most dictionaries provide. Wikipedia also covers a great deal more topics than paper encyclopedias, including a lot of topics that are not interesting enough, or just too weird, for printed encyclopedias.
What a school should not do, however, is require students to use multiple sources other than Wikipedia entries. A minimum number of other sources should be required so that students learn to do old-fashioned research and so that they learn just how bad many Wikipedia articles really are. Setting a limit on Wikipedia citations won't work; that just leads to students using it and not citing it. It would also be a good idea to use Wikipedia to teach children how to not write non-fiction; most Wikipedia entries are great examples of what not to do, and rewriting them would be a great project in and of itself.
The reason given was that Wikipedia (being user created and edited) did not represent a credible or reliable source of information for schools
I don't think that is a viable reason, since internet is user created on its whole. I mean, if they want kids not to be exposed to misinformation then block WAN access completely.
There's a reason why history grads often go on to very successful careers in apparently completely unrelated fields: It's because a good education in history is an education in thinking.
I didn't follow it through to university level but I still value one specific history class I took as the most important part of my education.
Studying World War II history, we weren't taught to memorize the dates of the outbreak of war, the dates of the conferences between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, and a bunch of other statistical but semi meaningless information when taken out of context.
Instead we were taught to look at the different sources, to embrace the fact that German propaganda ministry materials were biased, look at the just as biased British accounts of the time, the histories written (as Churchill said) by the victor after the event, form our own conclusions about where the truth likely lay and still appreciate the value that the slanted perspective would have had on the respective populations.
By understanding the broader picture, not only did I find a hell of a lot more interest in the period but I also got taught how to think independently, to analyze sources and form my own opinions.
Wikipedia isn't a perfect source of truth. Then again, most textbooks that cover their nation's wars with another country aren't either.
In an ideal world, you teach students how to assess the truth of what they're told, how to think and how to form their own opinions.
Unfortunately, America seems hell bent on raising children that believe the sanctioned news source is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. When they grow up and start watching something like Fox News as their source of truth, look at the wonderful mess a country that had no idea about the real facts can get in to when the majority of voters think what they're told to and need four years of death and a demolished "liberated" country to make them stop and question.
Now imagine what would have happened if the average American had learned in highschool to listen to what Fox was saying, flick over to the Daily Show for a humorous counter, go on line to a non American news source like the BBC for a third perspective, then Wikipedia for a potentially somewhat inaccurate but still useful grounding in the region's politics and history.
Sure, they might reasonably have concluded Iraq had chemical weapons - after all, we still had the recepits from when we sold them to them in the 80s. They might have weighed up the national interest and judged it higher than the concerns voiced elsewhere in the world. I don't care whether they would have agreed with me or not - but at least they would have thought rather than spat venom at anyone being "unpatriotic," leaving all rational thought at the door.
So, in short: A source doesn't have to be accurate to be valuable. Often, in learning to appreciate the inaccuracies, we learn vastly more. If nothing else, at least we engage our brains - which seems like a good thing to encourage school children to do if you're going to call yourselves educators.
[shouting]
/. tells us how to enter posts. Mind your P's and Q's and capslock and all that.
power to the peeps
stick it to da man
[/shouting]
[siderant]
You know, it's odd that a supposedly liberal rag site like
[/siderant]
Cost to modify Wikipedia: Access to a computer and the internet.
Cost to publish a website: Access to a computer and the internet.
Cost to publish a magazine: a few hundred dollars US for publishing.
Cost to publish a book: a few thousand dollars US for publishing.
Cost to get published in a journal: a phd, about 6 years of your life on scholarship. Just in dollars a good university will sell you one for the cost of tuition. If time is short you could just pay off an phd to put out whatever findings you want. Or if you want to be massive about it lavishly fund several studies that are specifically tailored to give you what you want.
The fact of the matter is none of these are outside the reach of ordinary individuals. If you've got an agenda you can push it with whatever level of credibility you want. If you can't weigh the credibility of sources you're screwed no matter what.
Censorship is wrong, period.
'nuf said
Yes please block wikipedia.
Obviously, if you're going to make students focus on things that have to do with their education, your first choice should be wikipedia. We all know the rest of the Internet is purely about education, and only from reliable sources.
Just remember to keep donkeygangbang.com open, as that is one of the most educational sites out there.
It ahould not be blocked. It gives students an opportunity to learn about sources, authority, bias and a host of other topics related to rehtoric.
they are still leaving the bulk of the internet available? Citing potential misinformation as a reason seems disingenuous.
I'm a fourth-year PhD candidate in materials science. (For those who don't know, the field combines elements of mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, and physics, among others.)
When I need to know something, I have no hesitation about calling up Wikipedia to find information. Often a Wikipedia article will be in the top ten Google results, and I'll go to it first. More than any other encyclopedia, I find Wikipedia to be an easy and convenient resource to give me a starting point in my research. Often I have forgotten (or never learned) some basic principle in math or physics, and I'll always check Wikipedia.
Often in research, you don't know where to start. Wikipedia is an excellent place to start.
Would I ever cite Wikipedia in a peer-reviewed paper, or in my thesis? No.
Will I use Wikipedia to help me learn enough to find more useful, authoritative sources? Heck yes. I do that every day.
Your school board decided to block probably the single most informative website? Because SOME of the data might be wrong? Ohh no because the data was user generated(apparently because users are completely stupid? where does the schoolboard think data comes from for other reference materials?) I personally think the reason the school board wants to block wikipedia is because it makes research easier. Did they also ban hardcopy Encyclopedias? Forget banning sites, and teach your kids how to think. Teach them to corraborate their data with more than one source. I was taught this in school (despite the fact the school didn't allow us to access the non existent wikipedia)
well, schoolblock - so that only registered users can edit from on site. As a teacher I have no problem with them using it - as a staff we agree it can't be their sole source and there has to be some corroboration (not too hard as most articles link to supporting info.)
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Given the amazing amount of information we have to go on from this story...without any links...I'll just fill in the missing information by making it up.
What was the most likely scenario:
1) The WAN gave those students access to only the following 2 sites: wikipedia and slashdot. And they decided to ban wikipedia because they discovered (on slashdot) that all wikipedia articles are written by 2 dudes who live in some other moms basement. And we all know that those 2 dudes don't know everything!
2) The WAN has free access to the internets, including pr0n, warez, myspace, yourspace, backspace, etc. The teachers decided to ban wikipedia because they figured that if all the students would actually start reading that they would all be out of a job soon.
3) Some teacher who had been living under a rock had been told about how wikipedia really worked and decided to rightfully ban wikipedia because of the potential danger of a student running into a story that wasn't 100% based on verified facts. Unfortunatly this same teacher hasn't actually ever been on the web and doesn't yet know what the internet is. When this gets explained to him, we can all hear his head exploded (pictures at 11).
4) All of the above.
Our school district "blocks" sites like LiveJournal and MySpace. This provides our student body with an excellent education in some branches of computer science - like tunnelling, overseas proxy servers, and anonymous browsing in general.
Besides, to state the obvious, students generally do their homework papers at home - where Wikipedia is freely available.
what school is this? I'd like to send them a letter...
. . . I would suggest printing the thing out, binding it, and smuggling it into the school library.
Their they're doing there hair.
My home page isn't a credible source of academic information. It's not lies... it's just random crap about me. On that basis, they should block my home page too.
or make their teachers and classbooks look bad.
Let's get together and burn some books!
I say this, as someone who doesn't exactly like wikipedia.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
What they should be doing is taking old, useless computers and turning them into stand-alone Wikipedia kiosks and setting them up in all classrooms. I think Wikipedia is the most useful site on the whole net.
I use it as an initial source for every bit of research I do. Often if you simply want a quick run-down on a given subject or person it's the only place you need to go. It's concise and gives full citations (or mentions where they are needed). For non-controversial subjects you can absolutely regard it as being as accurate as any encyclopedia out there.
And for controversial subjects, I think it does a better job of being objective than any other site. Every page also has a discussion page where people can note any problems they might have with an article or edit. Ever see an encyclopedia that does that? There's also good mechanisms to deal with edit wars or to request reviews of disputed articles.
It's also more comprehensive and current than any encyclopedia I've ever heard of. If something culturally significant happened yesterday there's probably already an article in Wikipedia about it.
Teachers and other academics often see themselves as the gatekeepers to knowledge; it should come as no surprise to anyone that when a new technology comes along which threatens this gatekeeper role, schools and educators start talking about banning the technology. Wikipedia is a disruptive technology when it comes to education, and the arguments against it amount to little more than smoke-screens and academic arm-waving. When you think about it, the arguments against Wikipedia always boil down to a lack of academic credentials for the people who create and edit Wikipedia articles, plus a propensity for young students to cut & paste Wikipedia articles into their own papers instead of doing real research. The first argument, lack of credentials, is the easiest to dismiss.
Through Wikipedia, unlike what you see in a typical school textbook, readers can always find out exactly who edited which articles, and in many cases, they can follow the discussion on the talk pages about why people think some information should be included in an article or, conversely, why some information should be excluded. Overall, those two features represent a massive boost to both the credibility and reliability of the factual knowledge contained in the Wikipedia. Edit pages and talk pages open the door for everyone to see how the knowledge in the Wikipedia is created and distilled. If Wikipedia editors held academic credentials, it might make it easier for us to accept that the facts contained in the articles are true, but credentials themselves don't have any direct bearing on the truth or falsehood of any given fact. Wikipedia, just like any other potential source of factual knowledge, should always be taken with a grain of salt. Academics can make mistakes just like anyone else and, on occasion, they've been known to distort or misrepresent facts based on a personal or a political agenda. Facts become facts when we have wide-spread agreement on the truth of certain statements. Wikipedia fosters this process of building consensus and agreement -- traditional textbooks sure as hell do not.
The second argument educators like to make against Wikipedia is that students find it easy to plagerize using Wikipedia, or that many students simply rip facts out of Wikipedia articles without doing any real research to check the validity of those facts. To this argument I'd just like to point out that the same kind of student laziness existed well before Wikipedia came on the scene, and Wikipedia is not to blame because some students prefer to game the system instead of learning what the schools are trying to teach. Hell -- I think a way to solve this problem would be to have students write original Wikipedia articles instead of useless, overly redundant term papers. At least then, student's work would actually amount to something useful, and their efforts might contribute to the overall scope of knowledge. As it is now, term papers are pretty much make-work, which may be one of the reasons why some students don't want to put forth do more than a minimum amount of effort in writing them. If students had to create original Wikipedia articles, I would image that they'd be forced to go and do some real fact-gathering and writing, which is exactly what the schools are trying to teach with term papers, right?
One of the most controvesial part of Wikipedia is the Religion parts. Some posters have a vested interest in a position and some live and die by some of the points. The very nature of controversy is the use of every trick in the book to prove or cite why their position is probable. Unfortunately you cannot censor out controversy, just post a warning that the whole article is a work in progress. Even political wonks have been caught editing their patron's wiki article. However the most important part of wikipedia is the use of the history of the article. So let's look at some of the citation tricks. Use of sources not on the internet is a great way to cite something that won't be immediately checked.Also using sources that haven't been published in ages is another way to be proven uncheckable. Another great source is internet access that requires payment. Most poor students will never pay for research and the ones that can will publish their own rebuttle at a later date. Use of misquotes is another way to verify your statements, if found out you can claim you made a mistake (make sure it is an easy error, not a massive rewrite...)Lastly cite a student's research which only the professor or the school in which the student went to has access.
Your school board should not block students from reading or viewing information no matter how it's presented. It's plain foolish, and you should find a way to make the individuals who voted this through to admit to themselves that they're manifesting their own fears of inadequacy regarding teaching and personal knowledge by trying to censor a source of information more qualified to teach than the teachers themselves. Simply put, I feel the adults are worried about the kids knowing too much.
I'm just giving a suggestion on how to get this ruling reversed when you're presenting your argument to the school board because you'll have to explain why people could be inclined to change their minds when the facts of the situation have remained the same.
Any estimate of how much "accurate information" I've accumulated from Wikipedia would be an understatement. Even during class, there have been many times that Wikipedia has been used as a supplement or reference to the lesson being taught (e.g. "I can't remember off the top of my head, but check what it says on Wikipedia and I'll explain it on the board"), and it is in this form that you could begin to have Wikipedia integrated into classroom sessions. Have the children bring up a certain page, and use the teacher as a facilitator to the students' surfing. Watch what they're reading and clarify any ambiguous statements you notice. Have a day at the beginning of the year where you explain how to use Wikipedia properly and be sure to present the different types of warnings that appear above the articles so the students can start identifying themselves where they may receive misinformation.
I have to wonder what your school board is doing to fill the void created by the absence of Wikipedia. Are they getting peer reviewed textbooks updated daily? Are they replacing the teachers' brains with a machine that contains more knowledge than any non-mechanical individual can ever hope to accumulate? Are they placing hyperlinks in every book so that kids can quickly look up a word or concept that they don't understand in order to enable them to fully understand the original concept?
Lastly, I know others have said it already, but you should realize that as far as websites go, Wikipedia is near the top in terms of accuracy of information. What's going to happen now is that instead of students using the Wikipedia search box, they'll use Google and their chances of receiving what your school board regards as misinformation increase.
Any attempt to ban inaccurate sources should start with American history textbooks. See the book "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong" by James Loewen (ISBN 0684818868).
Compared to the "Dog ate My Homework Routine" we're now getting from the White House, Wikipedia just got its credibility moded up.
By this standard, the students will have to have the White House website blocked as well. Its simply not fact based and the last thing we should be doing to further damage the already declining morals of American youth would be to expose them to the immorality of this presidency. Especially, since today the White House announced that POTUS has made it official. He is now on record as supporting the World Bank president's right to get blowjobs at taxpayers expense. I had thought that kind of moral failing went out with the Clinton years.
I'm shocked just the quickly right wing nuts on the wheels of state have lost their bearings. No wonder the Repooplican party is in such disarray. One has to ask just how long they will continue to engage in this kind of facistic behavior just to continue to provide cover.
Great! After having just returned from Communist China (where they deliberately block WikiPedia) the USA now has school districts blocking WikiPedia. Woa to all you dimwits who say "This is for the good of the children." What are you thinking???
That it's for the good of the children. So your argument is that kids should be exposed to the full weight of all that's available in the world from day one, regardless of whether or not they have the necessary cognitive skills to process it yet?
I'm not saying that Wikipedia is the equivalent of watching a snuff film, but your argument boils down to the fact that you don't believe in any controls whatsoever on what children are exposed to.
Part of the 'learning' process is to be able to acquire data and distinguish that which is accurate from that which is misleading. That is what makes us 'human'. If we do not teach our children how to distinguish the truth from made up lies and how to check a theory using multiple alternate sources then we end up cripling our future generations.
Yes, children need to be taught how to distinguish truth from lies. That's part of what we pay teachers for. If a teacher wants to print out an article from Wikipedia that's full of inaccuracies to bring in and show to the class as an example of how dangerous inaccuracies and lies can be and how to distinguish them from the truth, more power to him/her. But the teacher should be the one doing that; it shouldn't be up to the students to fend for themselves. School is not a democracy; never has been. It's not up to students to teach themselves.
Your and other comments here so far strike me as basically just a lot of whining. Schools have always had approved and unapproved sources for research. When I was young, Encyclopedia Britannica was accepted as a source in my school, but Encyclopedia Americana was not. This is nothing new. Even when I was at NYU, only primary sources were accepted in my course of study - encyclopedias weren't accepted for research at all.
Have any of you ever actually been to school? Or maybe you're in school now and pissed off that you're losing access to an easy source. Hey, you can always go to the library like we did 20 years ago and do some proper research, which is what you should be doing anyway.
So we're supposed to look at the BBC and FOX for an unbiased opinion?
F that. It's the openness that allows for wikipedia's accuracy.
I say schools recommend it, and enforce investigating the sources that the article cites.
Students armed with Wikipedia keep teachers on their toes. They don't like it. How much misinformation do our children receive from these authoritarian, heavy-handed old fogies? It such teachers and administrators who should be 'blocked'
I should have used a ";-)" or a "sarcasm" tag at the end of that line. It a crude attempt at a joke more than anything else. I wholeheartedly doubt that any of those companies are lobbying schools or our government for Wikipedia to be banned.
J. K. Rowling had some good commentary on the idea of school administrators trying to censor what information sources the students are allowed to read, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, where the highly dislikeable Dolores Umbridge, put in charge of Hogwarts by the incompetent and fearful government of the wizarding world, issued a series of edicts including a ban on students reading a tabloid newspaper that had just published a lengthy article about student Harry Potter, who was on Umbridge's bad side at the time. Naturally, once it was banned it became the most popular reading matter all over the school.
--Dan
Web Tips
Should we block sites such as Wikipedia because students may be exposed to misinformation, or should we encourage sites such as Wikipedia as an outlet for students to investigate and determine the validity of the information?
In a country where if somebody sticks a screwdriver in his eye can turn around and sue the manufacturer for failing to specifically mention in the instructions that he could not do that, it is only a natural extrapolation to have school boards decide what is patriotic, what is right, what is wrong, what is permissible what is acceptable, what is cool.
In fact, it is the reverse dynamic: Aren't you conditioned from the early age to yield to proper authority and the experts, obey in general arbitrary decisions? Do you know how many times I've heard "I don't support that decision but I have to stand by our Dear Leader"? Do you think it is accidental that this educational system produces these surreal responses?
Do you think it would be easy to manipulate people with critical faculties intact? Do you think it would be easy to convince them they need useless shit to buy? No it wouldn't. That's why it is mui importante to get them early, as early as possible to get used to yielding to arbitrary authoritative standards and make sure you teach them how wonderful almost fictitious people fought and gave their lives for their somewhat distant, never to be exercised without proper permission rights...
I think I should read Franz Kafka again...
Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
No, they're not the same. Partly for technical reasons (students don't pay taxes, for example, immigrants do but aren't citizens, and so forth), but more importantly because these are different roles people fill, and because language matters. Casting the debate in terms of "taxpayers" introduces an immediate bias, just as casting it in terms of "education" introduces a different (and in my opinion appropriate) bias. Words matter, as anyone from folks involved in the same-sex marriage debate to George Orwell can tell you. See my response to another post on the topic.
Good thing that you pointed out that the kids could access Wikipedia from home. Now we know that we'll need to block access from everywhere.
Think of the children!
First choice, take a group of students in your social studies/current events class, and group them up into 'teams.' Charge them with the task of finding entries on Wikipedia that have become outdated due to modern changes in the real world. Have them cite how they found the entry, how they determined and proved that the information listed was outdated. Then have Those same teams present to the class their modified Wikipedia entry, again, citing where the new verified content originating, and giving due credit to those sources. They learn teamwork, research, how to present and identify the integrity of information, as well as contributing to the font of knowledge available to society as a whole.
Second choice, bar access to wikipedia and tell the children that god made the world in 7 days and abstinence before marriage is the only way to prevent cooties.
The blatant inanity of these entire debate just reinforces my contempt for the entire american educational system. No, I can't propose a better solution on how to educate the minds of our children, but you give me a fucking multibillion dollar budget and watch as I find ways to send you some answers.
Any system that educates citizens and sets them loose upon society with priorities so skewed as to consider the artificiality of Anna Nicole's breasts as more newsworthy than....well, jesus, ANYTHING is more important. Hypothosizing about what China will be doing with its trillion dollar cash surplus. Discuss the future of modern capitalism and democracy and the survival of one without the other. Why do monkeys sleep with two fingers in their anus? I don't know but for the love of google, EDUCATE YOURSELF, people.
But you were still allowed to read encyclopedias right? Teachers can still tell their students that Wikipedia is an unacceptable source, but why remove access? Are you also blocking access to online forums? Are you taking all the fiction out of the library? I'm pretty sure that "my friend Bill who watches the History channel" isn't an acceptable source for my History class, but the school doesn't prevent me from talking to him.
1) Students should not be blocked from reading it. It is a good source for everyday facts (say, properties of a particular metal, definition of a literary term, influences and contemporaries of an author, date of a birth of a historical personage, the difference between a pistil and a stamen, how to use a semicolon) and certain "obscure" topics (mass media, popular music, small towns) that don't have their own books devoted to them. It's a great way to start exploring a topic. It's a good supplement (along with the internet in general) if textbooks and teachers don't explain a topic perfectly.
It's an educational tool, and a good one. Not perfect, but a hell of a lot faster, easier, and more comprehensive than any current alternative. While there may be errors in the details, the general picture is usually accurate.
2) Using it as a sole or even a major source should not be allowed. Make it clear to students that it must be cited like any other source and should not be directly quoted. University profs can outright forbid it if they want to. I don't think most high school students really have the skills to do proper research--perhaps seeing the process in progress on Wikipedia will help them out.
Maybe point out that if they quote a mistake and cite it properly, it's their source's fault and not their own. But if they don't cite it, they're in trouble twice. Just a thought.
3) Elementary, junior, and high schools should be blocked from editing it. A great deal of vandalism comes from school networks. I've seen pages blanked and replaced with "Brad is a dick!!!!!" so many times. It's kids giggling to each other in the computer lab doing this. Look at the user profiles of IP addresses that belong to schools, and you'll see a continuous pattern of vandalism.
4) Perhaps a course in media awareness is called for. Kids need to be taught how media can be distorted to influence them. The only education I got on this in school was a brief discussion of propaganda in Nazi Germany. It's an important enough topic to warrant more education.
Kids have other references. If they want to look anything on wiki-pedia they can do it from home with their parents approval. Given that Wiki-pedia covers just about everything, including many topics that some don't consider appropriate for their kids, it seems reasonable to me. Also given that they can go there on an election day and find the page for one of the candidates with a picture of a middle finger an a caption saying it's the candidate and his family, I don't consider it that valuable a reference for K-12 topics. Most other encyclopedias aren't annotated with flame wars.
I hear all the time that if I don't want my kids exposed something at a given age then it is up to me to limit what their (TV, internet, etc) access should be and that I shouldn't impose it on others. How do I do it if the schools or other institutions usurp my authority and enable my kids to circumvent my wishes? If I tell them no myspace and they do it at a friend's, I can at least ground them from then on. If they do it at school, I have no recourse. I can't reasonable say "no more school for you."
I've seen arguments here asking what about the rights of the kids. In many respects, I as a parent am responsible for determining my kids rights. Until they are 18 year old most of these rights are still called privileges. I'm especially responsible if they get out of line, so I want to have the ultimate say in what my kids privileges are.
If the schools block a website, then it's my say if my kids get to use it from home. I'm ok with that. I'm not really that uptight about them going to wiki-pedia right now (my oldest is only 6) but if it's entirely my responsibility to monitor what my watch, what my kids buy, what my kids hear and what they do on the net when they are still a tender age then I prefer that I be the one granting the access and that the schools not offer my kids the ability around my authority.
As a high school student, I might be able to provide some insight into this. A lot of people know that Wikipedia and such are not acceptable sources, those that don't learn quickly. There's about a 90% chance that anyone after the first half of their freshman year who cites Wikipedia just doesn't care, or is trusting their luck that their teacher won't notice (Has happened once or twice, not a lot though). If someone cites Wikipedia or sites like it gets a lower grade, though by how much depends on the teacher.
In any case, "Inappropriate" sites are blocked (Myspace, pr0n, etc.), but Wikipedia is wide open. Anyone with any technical skill can get around the filter, though, so it's pretty effective, but enough people know how to that if they did something like block Wikipedia, it'd be useless anyway.
One of the things Wikipedia is good for is finding links to more reliable sites, and finding books to look up, as you said, at the library.
As is often said, wikipedia can be compared to a sausage... its all good as long as you don't look too closely into how it is made...
Anyway, wikipedia is a ridiculous place with a toxic, almost fascist, groupthink culture. In spite of that, by are large, it is a good thing, and a useful resource.
This decision is idiotic. At the end of the day the message for the students is "Don't think for yourself, don't develop critical thinking skills, just let someone else tell you what the truth is".
I am disgusted by this particular school board's decision to block wiki as a blanket ban with no exceptions. Combined with having to submit work to such shops as turnitin.com, and it sounds as if the students are treated as copycats unless they can prove otherwise. This is ridiculous.
There is a reason why educators and administrators love corporate reference sites like Proquest, and it's not that they can get a very wide variety of factual information. It is because these people are lazy; they don't want to spend their time checking and validating references. They all think that, if it comes from Proquest (or any other reference depository site for that matter) then it's an unqualified reference (meaning, everything as presented in the reference is both validated and verified as facts). If they cannot trust the people that moderate Wikipedia, then why is it that they can blindly trust the folks who do the same thing in those paid shops?
As for writing term work, as a student I never spent more than twenty percent of my time into actually writing papers. Why? Because there is very little difference in the final grade of my work. I can spend five minutes per hour or fifty minutes per hour on the same work, and the results aren't that much different. In fact, the last time I had to submit my work to turnitin.com I wrote it in a little over six hours.
If the teachers aren't going to teach us how to determine the validity of the reference we cite, why should they spend their valuable time ensuring that we cannot visit Wikipedia during school hours?
Since throughout the United States, most school boards are run by local citizens without an ounce of clue for the most part, we shouldn't be shocked when a school board at the local, district, county, or even state level shows it's ignorance and small mindedness.
A song says (I forget which one) "My education didn't hurt me none" is a statement to the resiliance of young people to detect and disregard bull sh*t, rather than the careful planning of adults.
The road to hell is ordered by the righteous, planned by the well meaning, and paved with good intentions.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
This is my problem with schools, instead of teaching children they feel it's their responsibility to police children. What's next? If a child gets home and goes on wikipedia the parents should be considered harmful for showing them that site.
It's very simple, Wikipedia is a fast reference, but in no way shape or form is it a sitable reference. Want to know the 1999 New York Knicks line up? Wiki probably has it. Want to know why Camels are able to go a long time without water, wiki probably knows that too.
However Wikipedia is the beginning of any journey. You need to check their citations, do a little work on your own and figure it out.
This is the same as schools not realizing that maybe they should teach people how to effectively use search engines, or effectively use computers in general, to research and find hard data. At my office Wikipedia is considered "fact" but at the same time everyone knows the fallacies of it, and everyone also has common sense. No one jumps out a window to fly because they read it in wikipedia, we mostly use it for fast reference. Jack says there's 1 person in the house of representatives that is from DC, Jill says Do they even get to vote. Wikipedia answers both questions, no one disagreed with it, no one cared after we found out. Move on to next agenda item (actually happened). But again we were all using common sense and aren't using it for anything more than random information we'll forget tomorrow. Again something schools could teach but decide not to.
But then again schools have changed, any idiot can pass a grade, you can't even hold kids back because it's perceived that it's their right to graduate, and if you act out you have a problem, it couldn't be that you're an adolescent? Our teachers are glorified babysitters, is it any wonder that we're going to complain about the schools in congress?
The real kicker is I went to a rich rural city's schools, I can only imagine what hell the inner city schools are like.
The only reason Wikipedia is being blocked is because some CEO of an encyclopedia company is afraid they aren't going to sell their precious little books anymore, once the public realizes that even a public-edited encyclopedia is both more accurate than and freer from propaganda than the commercial equivalent.
It's just DRM for knowledge, plain and simple. Like the "does not represent a credible or reliable source of information" argument doesn't apply to the rest of the Internet, or television and radio and newspapers for that matter? Nobody would even be making this argument, if there weren't commercially published encyclopedias already. Give me a fucking break!
Sure Wikipedia has its accuracy issues occasionally but for the same general information you will find in a typical encyclopedia it's spot-on. The questionable accuracy usually pertains to current people and events most of which have yet to show up in traditional encyclopedias and offline reference sources. One of the benefits of Wikipedia is its self-governing nature, if something is grossly inacurate, its often updated and corrected in a very timely fashion. Most "inaccuracies" you hear about tend to be eitehr subjects that no one beyond a niche segment would look up and seem to more often than not be the result of a "fans vs foes" grudge match rather than someone posting with actual referece in mind.
Because of my job I know many minor national and local celebrities here in the midwest, a few of them that have actually spent time either adding themselves to Wikipedia or looking themselves up and attempting to edit the results. I find it rather pathetic, every time I hear of it I cant help but think of Steve Martin opening his phone book for the first time in "The Jerk". Ego tends to contribute far more to inaccuracies than any other factor.
Textbooks don't just feature political bias. Never mind the creationism/evolution debate, science textbooks are full of incorrect statements about noncontroversial. Like one every few pages. (College books are significantly better, but check the errata list for your favorite reference books some time.) Errors on Wikipedia can get fixed overnight, but errors in a middle school science book may mislead students for upwards of a decade.
Maybe they were just sick of writing F on papers handed in which were copied from Wikipedia, down to "[citation needed]" markers.
Of course, if they block all sites which are not credible and reliable sources of information, the decision makers won't be able to get to Slashdot to read these comments.
BTW, I don't think Helen Keller was a vocal anything...
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
As soon as every teacher is more credible than Wikipedia, go ahead.
They blocked us, thanks to some butwipe kids in our district who must have messed with their site, but with no warning our entire district was blocked since they come in on one IP address. Was only temp, but I still gave them a piece of my mind for not informing us that someone was messing around with their site so we could track down the kid and punish them.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Are they going to be exposed to unreliable sources of information out in the real world? If the answer is "yes" then simply excluding Wikipedia means that you're failing to teach them how to deal with the real world. My wife is a teacher and in her school they tell the students that they can use Wikipedia, but they cannot cite it as a source. That's a balanced way to deal with a potentially unreliable source; use it as starting point, but assume that what it says requires confirmation.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
The reason given was that Wikipedia (being user created and edited) did not represent a credible or reliable source of information for schools.
And some teacher with a few years of college education two decades ago and in a different field is? Or some textbook whose primary purpose is not to teach but to make money for the publisher? Or newspaper articles written by reporters who care more about their own notoriety than getting the facts right?
Students need to learn early on that there is no single "reliable" source of information; claims and assertions need to be examined and checked for consistency with lots of sources.
Far from being bad for education, Wikipedia is an excellent educational site, if not for its content (which is often better that sources that claim authority), then at least for discussions about authority and knowledge. Of course, that appears to be a fact lost on the school board, which tells me that instead of blocking Wikipedia, the school district should fire the school board.
>>Even when I was at NYU, only primary sources were accepted in my course of study - encyclopedias weren't accepted for research at all.
::gasp:: actually make Wikipedia more accurate!
The major flaw with this is that many if not most primary sources are not available for study, or not by college students. Can you imagine a theology class wanting first-hand access to the Dead Sea Scrolls? Or a physics class wanting access to Einstein's lab notes (in the original German, of course.)
Almost ALL modern knowledge has been interpreted, filtered, collected, verified, modified, and edited by those who came earlier. This makes it more valuable, not less.
Blocking access to Wikipedia is stupid and shortsighted. Why not have a class project to perform fact-checking on selected articles? The students could even submit corrections and
Carrying the school boards logic farther means that they should all resign.
Of course, the school board has no more authority than Wikipedia as they were not selected by a respected authority.
Obviously, elections can not be trusted to create valid leadership. One needs a trained authority, such as a king or dictator, to make those decisions.
I dunno about you, but where I go to school, we are always required to list our sources. And we are told wikipedia isn't an 'authoritative' source and we can't use it. However, that in no way prevents us from using it as a source of sources. There are many uses of wikipedia other than just for research. Blocking sites that they deem bad sources simply shows that the teachers are too lazy to actually check the work.
This is just a turf war. Teachers are mad that "Big Box Store" wikipedia has marched into town and offers more and better information than they can at far less cost. So what do they do? They assault wikipedia's character by questioning its credibility.
Personally I have found wikipedia to be as credible if not more credible than everything I was taught at school.
By blocking sites like Wikipedia you are doing absolutely _nothing_ to help you students. The information you can get access to through sites such as Wikipedia isn't something that should be lost. Why block access to something that could potentially be the most accurate and up to date source of information on a subject because it could be wrong, just like, um, everything else you find on the internet? If you're blocking Wikipedia you may as well remove access to the internet from your students. Its the only way your going to stop them from viewing it at school when websites such as Answers.com give access to the Wikipedia article on the subject you've searched for and finding a proxy isn't exactly a difficult task, unless you block all search engines too. More than once have I found Wikipedia to be more accurate and in a few cases correct where my course notes are wrong. There's an uproar among senior students when the IT staff update their list of blocked sites as every time they do Wikipedia is classified as "personal pages" and blocked for the next couple of weeks while the IT staff get off their asses and add it to the white list.
The way in which people access information is changing. With the amount of user-generated, 'non authoritative' content available these days (from blogs to fan sites to sites like wikipedia), determining how reliable a source of information (including any bias or affiliation an author has) is has become an essential lesson thats needs to be learned by all, at as young an age as is possible. Gone are the days where the only source of information available is the teacher and a couple of really expensive 'approved' books in the school library.
The schools need to focus more on teaching how to make a determination on what a good reliable source is and less on a vain attempt at limiting the information students have access to.
[The Universe] has gone offline.
Actually, there is a secure connection, which, depending on the type of block, can be used to access Wikipedia; also with a poor connection. And there are always open proxies, if only for reading Wikipedia, not editing it (open proxies are blocked for various reasons). Draco would be proud.
See, there are some issues I find with that. Primarily among them is the fact that while wikipedia does have unconfirmed and user moderated information, it does have a very large redeeming quality. Most articles on Wikipedia list all of their sources. Using wikipedia articles proper may not be the best idea, but when researching, I often use wiki sources as a spring board for articles and useful information. Now, at the present moment, I work as a writing tutor for college students of all levels (from fresh to phd, so far), and the policy on use of wikipedia varies geatly from teacher to teacher. Ironically, the director of my university's library is a big advocate of using wikipedia, whereas there is a resounding opinion in departments like English and Philosophy that wikipedia has no value whatsoever. I personally don't recommend using wikipedia articles in research, but am quite the advocate to use it for the source material, and I recommend that to every student that I tutor. Personally, I suppose I can see why a school would ban wikipedia, but I think that their time would be better spend blocking other websites and mirror sites, rather than something which has potential use like Wikipedia.
... Wikipedia is an unreliable source of knowledge, so everyone should learn from U.S. high school teachers instead.
Reading through the comments here, I see lots of divisiveness, but little actual grasp of reality. 1) Reliability of wikipedia. My litmus test for an encyclopedia is the Tesla/Marconi test. Look at the entries for Marconi and Tesla. If it says that Marconi invented radio, then it's not a reliable source. If it says that Tesla did, it's reliable. This is a point of fact that was settled by the SCOTUS about 60 years ago. Wikipedia gets it right. Most printed encyclopedias I have checked get it wrong. (I used to work for a school district, and part of my duties were to receive in books. I had *lots* of chances to check encyclopedias). 2) 'Learning' is not about regurgitating accepted information. It's about gaining the skills to understand and discriminate good information from bad. Part of the way that a person gains these skills is by occasionally doing the wrong thing and getting corrected. A school district which lays out a policy which (in effect) says 'You may only cite sources of which we approve', is not allowing students the chance to make mistakes--and thereby learn. They are also eliminating the concept of contesting data. (see the following point) 3) Approved sources vs. authoritative sources. When I was in high school, I took a class on WWII. I read the approved textbooks and the approved stories of what happened. As part of the class, I interviewed a WWII veteran--in this case, my father. When comparing the approved text's description of what happened at Monte Casino, and my father's description of what happened, there was a huge disparity. One version was written by historians, peer reviewed, edited, and accepted by the school district. The other version was from someone who was actually there at the time it happened. Which would *you* believe? In school we are taught (by authoritative sources!) that George Washington's teeth were wooden (False-- they were ivory), that Marconi invented the radio (False--it was Nicola Tesla), and that American bravery resulted in the capture of Monte Casino (False--it was the devious and brutal actions of the Sikhs that causes a German surrender). I'm not sure about the last one, but I know that Wikipedia gets the first two correct, where the approved sources get them wrong. The administrations who ban Wikipedia (and other online resources) on the basis of 'validity', are prejudiced. They think that anything in print is, somehow, magically endowed with veracity. Those administrations are wrong. The truth of the matter is that *all* sources of information should be questioned. They should be bounced against other sources and both the similarities and discrepancies should be considered and weighed for value. But schools aren't interested in that. They aren't interested in teaching kids how to think, because teachers aren't rewarded on how well students criticize 'conventional wisdom', and critical and independent thinking doesn't show up well on standardized tests. And before anyone shouts me down, I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who has been on the teaching side of academia--as both a teacher and an administrator--for the better part of 20 years. As a teacher, I welcomed *any* source that could be justified. I will set one instance of 'My dad was there' against a thousand established encyclopedias and history texts.f Wikipedia is full of experts, and they have to defend themselves--constantly--against a host of counter arguments. If that isn't the epitome of peer review, I don't know what is. Oh... and for those who say that sites such as MySpace have no value? Have you seen how many politicians are explaining their platforms via MySpace blogs and profiles? That sounds pretty authoritative to me.
Maybe we should also block google since it can return adult websites or other wrong information, huh?
Hear, hear!
For example, schools are themselves an unreliable source of information, as is shown ipso facto by having them declare in a blanket way that Wikipedia is unreliable as a source of information.
But schools are what we have, so we deal with them. I don't suggest shutting them down just because they've given bad facts once in a while. No system is perfect. And Wikipedia is what we have, so we should deal with that.
I don't mean to say there aren't alternatives to Wikipedia. What I mean is that Wikipedia is the issue it is exactly because it is used, not because it is there. Many things are there that are not used, and hence not banned.
This reminds me of the debate over whether kids should be exposed to TV. I have a few friends who think they shouldn't be. It's their right, as parents, to decide for their own kids, but I also think (and I tell them when they ask my opinion) that it's extreme and ill-advised. Does TV rot minds? Probably somewhat. But probably not because of an inherent limitation of TV as much as the way in which people learn to consume it. I have little doubt that someone growing up with parents who work with them to watch TV in an informed way, using judgment about what to watch, exercising critical thought about what they see, how to timeshift, etc. is going to do better in life than someone who either hides from TV as a phenomenon or dives in and uses it without help. TV is part of our culture, and one needs to understand it to live in and around it, regardless of one's feelings about it. Teaching abstinence may sound good, but the appeal will be strong, and teaching appropriately safe practices is better for anything so compelling.
And I think the same about Wikipedia. It's a perfect opportunity to talk about objective and subjective knowledge (and even about the philosophical limits of what public education can teach one), about the practical motivations for all those references they want in your papers, about trust relationships and fraud, about truth and lying and the many gray areas between, about free speech and censorship, about cooperative social structures (from the informal Wikipedia to the formal US political system itself) and how it's hard to control them fully without strangling them (the cost of freedom, in other words), about capitalism and economics on the net (and how to shop around for info), about bias in writing (intentional and otherwise), and other things. Or, alternatively, you can just tell people that if they close their eyes, none of these issues will exist.
All in all, I personally like my education systems to be "eyes open".
Then again, this is a democracy ... one where we vote district by district on whether to believe Science or Religion ... so maybe my personal opinion will be outvoted.
As a footnote, I also wonder if the people who hold Wikipedia to such a strict standard are equally picky across the board about what students are taught in other references and other subject areas. Do they make sure the other dictionaries they use are free of hidden bias? How exactly? Do they have an approved list of newspapers that show no bias? Is CNN or Fox News their preferred TV news? How about the New York Times vs the Washington Post? Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken? And independent of media outlets, what is their standard of truth as applied in other areas? Do they teach politics? history? philosphy? media? art? economics? What do they accept as appropriately documented, unfettered truth in those areas, other than "anything not coming from Wikipedia"?
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Kudos for a good attempt though.
People forget why we do education. It's not to have kids write good, well referenced essays - it's to teach them HOW to write good, well referenced essays. Without doubt, Wikipedia is an insanely valuable resource - but you have to know how to use it.
So let's train our children to live in a world where the sum total of human knowledge is available from a single site on the web - but you can't 100% trust what it says. Merely blocking access to it does nothing - worse than nothing in fact because just as soon as they get out into the real world where Wikipedia ISN'T blocked - they'll use it uncritically because they've never been taught to use it right.
For things that don't matter much - just use it - and 99 times out of 100 it's right. For things that DO matter - by all means read Wikipedia - but use it to find the primary references that you CAN trust. Then look those up and reference them. But that's what you've got to do with any encyclopedia - there are just as many (arguably more) errors in Encyclopedia Britannica - and I don't think that's been banned yet.
This is no different from the technological challenges of earlier generations. When I was a kid in the early '70s, the pocket calculator was just starting to take over from the slide rule. The school found that the lack of the need to figure out where to put the decimal point (which a calculator does automatically - but the slide rule does not), we were not estimating the value of the result in our heads - so if we made a keying mistake on the calculator, we could easily be miles from the correct answer and not know it. Nowadays, all kids use calculators and slide rules are pretty much museum pieces - we got over this 'problem' with calculators and taught people to realise the possibility of a keying error.
The same needs to happen for the ENTIRE Internet - not just Wikipedia. It's ludicrous to block Wikipedia - and not block any of a gazillion other information-providing sites. Most of those are created by a single individual who could just as easily be wrong as Wikipedia. We need to train kids to recognise what web-based information can be trusted and what must be double-checked before we can trust it.
www.sjbaker.org
And who says I'm not Jimbo Wales?
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Yes let's block Wikipedia, because of the possibility of misinformation. //10.0.0.1/library/sourceofallknowledge
Let's also block forums discussing any such information due to the possibility of student's receiving misinformation.
Let's also block any sites which have any information which disagrees with the school's policies.
Let's also block sites which disagree with the policies of people or governments we are directly associated with.
Let's force student's to use a specially crafted search engine to remove such misinformed sites given by other search engines such as Google (This has actually happened).
Let's block every site and only allow sites which match our policy.
Let's remove our internet connection and simply have an intranet filled with all our correct information which has been checked by the school to be correct, and of course, the school is the source of all knowledge of everything that is correct and right. After all, it has to be true; I found it out at http:
Try http://www.netencyclo.com/en/Slashdot
School boards are dinosaurs, positions are filled by elections that are about popularity and political persuasion. Most people know little about the qualifications of board candidates. Many board candidates take the positions for prestige or to grind axes. Many know little or nothing about education. Many are rubber stamps for a Superintendent.
The people on this board clearly fit the bill. Most probably know little about Wikipedia except what they've been told, some probably don't have a net connection. What they've been told is has probably been filtered to serve a political agenda rather than an educational one.
Wikipedia, for all of it's problems, is a remarkable resource. It's especially remarkable because it can be edited by anyone, including high school students. If I were still teaching, I'd encourage my students to find and improve the quality of articles they are interested in. They'd learn from that, and instead of having it thrown in the wastebasket, the whole world could benefit from their work. The class could look at each chosen article, criticize it, and possibly work in small groups to tackle problems.
But no. The dinosaur has spoken.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
I think I'll file this thread with these related ones:
48% of Americans Reject Evolution
US No Longer Technology King
Now please don't you burst my bubble and tell me that this [idiotic] school isn't US based.
I would go a step farther and say that MySpace has an immediate and obvious educational value. The fact that schools all over the nation have had, and still have music programs indicates that they feel music is in fact an educational endeavor. MySpace oddly enough is an exceedingly good resource for researching music.
The first is that people in the U.S. (the religious are a great place to start - "don't question-follow") are more concerned with their children's goodness than thoughtfulness - if they taught their children critical thinking skills, very few of these censorship issues would be an issue.
The second is banning wiki and other websites only hurts the poor or those who lack resources to do their wiki at home. In NY there are schools (in poor 'hoods) where they have no computers worth using and the encyclopedias are out of date and missing whole sections. These kids have no alternative. Blocking wiki and like sites because some white suburban parent found a pornstars entry is stupid - their kid will find it anyway (see above) and the kid with only school-funded equipment will not even want to start their assignment - how do you keep the playing field level?
Teach your children right from wrong, trust them - dont shelter them behind morality plays. When the time comes they will know what to do, if they dont - blame yourself for not teaching them. Banning information will only hurt those with no alternative access. There are no people who benefit from censorship, but society is damaged irreparably.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." ~The Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan
At school I am simply told Wikipedia is unreliable, that I should never use it, and that citing it would be utter silliness. I, among many students, realize the value of Wikipedia, and frequently use it in research (I know to use other sources to back it up if it's important, but looking up a Roman myth isn't something I feel compelled to double-check facts on). So, instead of reducing plagiarism (among other concerns over its use), its banning forces students to plagiarize, since they use it, but are told not to cite it, whether or not they also use other sources.
My webcomic
What a foolish decision for the school board to make. I use Wikipeda daily; not for any serious research mind you. Do I accept all information on Wikipeda as fact, hell no. However, its an excellent starting point for discovering _more_ information on a subject. Using such a resource not only provides subject matter, but a means to develop judgement and critical thinking.
Obviously, this is just another control designed to mold young minds rather then TEACH kids to use their minds.
The (e)book burnings are just around the corner.
At my High School, the growing list of blocked sites, ranging from MySpace to Meebo, does NOT contain Slashdot or Ars Technica.
Rirelobql xabjf gung EBG-13 vf gur yrnfg frpher rapelcgvba rire, ohg jbhyq lbh jnfgr lbhe gvzr npghnyyl qrpelcgvat vg???
Really... this is amusing. No joke.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Like all things, the truth lay somewhere beneath the words. It's not inaccuracies that schools fear. I can't tell you how many times I've found the answer keys in public schoolbooks to be wrong. Misinformation is nothing new.
If anyone still thinks that public "education" is about education, they're horribly mistaken. Calculus (and nearly all mathematics) hasn't changed in 100's of years, yet schools demand new math books each year. Why is that? History, as far as I know, doesn't (and shouldn't) change... yet new books are printed each year and sold for ridiculous prices. Many contain less actual content than the previous generations before them.
Public schooling is a business and the reasons to block Wikipedia are fiscal. Publishers and curriculum planners are directly threatened by Wikipedia.
Everyone knows our schooling is broken, and everyone has the wrong idea of how to fix it. More money is not the answer (some would argue that it's the problem) nor are laptops. The system needs to be rebuilt or abolished altogether, as do most long-lived government institutions (like social security, welfare, and minimum wage).
"Should Schools Block Sites Like Wikipedia?"
No, schools should teach critical thought. Then questions like this... unbelievably stupid questions like would never, ever have to be asked.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
"Modern" school systems are paralyzed with the fear that they'll get in trouble if their students don't make adequate passing grades. If we can control the information that students have access to, we can do everything short of holding the pen (or keyboard) for them so they can write it.
In Japan, for example, a student in a so-called "low-level" school can do absolutely nothing but attend class and make a passing grade. They aren't required to submit any homework, participate, or even stay awake, for that matter. They might occasionally have to endure some sort of counseling session, but that's about it. They have been classified by the system as stupid, and teachers take a "well, it can't be helped" approach to teaching them. And then people wonder why their society is slowly spiralling down the drain.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
As a fellow former history student, I'd like to mod you up! Unfortunately I just burned up my last mod point about 30 seconds before seeing your post. :-(
One of my professors' favorite tasks was to have us analyze news sources from past events. What were the sources used, at the time? What were the reporters' biases? What was the impact of the reporting on later events? Did the reporting change over time as the event fully unfolded? Wikipedia, hand-in-hand with an article's change-history, will be very interesting for future study.
Of course a School Board should be enacting policies on suitable reference materials. Whether it's a POB (Plain Old Book) encyclopedia or an on-line resource. Unlike Britannica, for example, with recognized experts writing the articles, or peer-reviewed literature, again with experts reviewing an article, there are no qualifications for Wikipedia authorship. I understand that many view this as a virtue, but WikiPedia is it is very much subject to Groupthink phenomena, resulting in least common denominator entries. Granted, the scientific articles seem to have gotten some decent reviews of late, but in no way could it be considered a scholarly resource.
Sorry, one sees so much tinfoil hattery on Slashdot - it's reflexive to believe the poster means it.
So even after Taking calculus and philosophy courses for many years now I'm still appalled at how many people who teach put form over substance. I mean it's hard enough to get students to really learn or do anything but blindly follow algorithmic directions without making it worse. Now you are going to give them the message that 'No, that's not the right way to learn about something.' I mean what better way could you find to grind home the message that learning isn't important; only following the arbitrary rules is important. Jesus Christ if this was April fools I would be sure this was a joke. I mean is wikipedia totally 100% accurate, of course not. Is it more accurate than asking your teacher? Probably. Both having been a student for some time and now having TAed I'm fully prepared to say that teachers are totally human and even the best of them get confused about things, misremember or otherwise give the wrong answer from time to time. Does it follow that we should ban teachers as well? Obviously not because teachers, despite being poor authoritative references, are quite useful to help students learn. The same goes with wikipedia. The situations are no different. You would take off points for a student who quoted the teacher in his term paper and you can do the same with wikipedia. I used to believe all that stuff about people resenting wikipedia because it undermined the traditional authorities was total BS. After incidents like this I find myself questioning that conclusion. Of course most likely this is motivated by the uncomfortably of teachers with this new technology and new ways of doing things but still it's totally amazing.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Awhile ago, when my County blocked Wikipedia. I spend 3 hours a day in Computer Classes (Digital Design 2 and Web Design 2), and since I'm not computer illiterate I tend to finish my projects in way under the time I have in those classes. So, I visit websites. Now, sure, I understand why they would block sites such as Myspace, Facebook, Newgrounds, and others... But, the blocking of Wikipedia just struck me as somewhat... Too far. Especially since the county didn't bother to tell anyone, at least, until I bugged my teacher to send them an e-mail. Their reasoning was pretty much word-for-word what the submitter wrote, that "Wikipedia was unreliable, and inaccurate, and too many kids were using it..." So, instead of just having our teachers inform us not to use it, and let the responsibility rest on the kids, they instead just put a full county-wide block. Just for reference, you can still read Wikipedia articles by checking the Google Cache, and the AP Computer Science/Calculus teacher at my school set up a proxy/gateway to Wikipedia on his class' website.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. ~~~ Voltaire
It's funny, because in my university they blocked sites like e-Messenger, Fotolog and YouTube, instead of Wikipedia.
Minti: What's that huge shuriken in your back?! Kin: It's the instrument of my victory.
That's probably a better system than "no child left behind", where every level of learning capacity is mixed together and no student is allowed to progress faster than the slowest learner in the class. Maybe more can be done for the "low-level" students in Japan, but on the other hand the policy you describe at least allows for there to be "high level" schools.
That's way better than the policy in the USA where there's no segmentation on ability until high school, and even then AP courses just allow the capable students to catch up with where every competent student should be (but they all get 5.5 high school GPAs on a 4 point scale).
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
nice, but what makes you think that the books are any different. Is something written on paper better reviewed, researched or accurate. Most schools libraries are underfunded and out of date.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Wait a second... you're saying that a high school student doesn't have the cognitive skills to process Wikipedia?
I can't see what possible advantage there could be to denying children access to information. The downside is that they might go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofellatio and giggle a bit. The upside is that they might go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory and develop an interest in theoretical economics (or mathematics, or evolutionary biology). Or maybe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nieche and think a bit about philosophy. Allowing fear of the former to prevent the possibility of the latter is a terrible tradeoff. And yes, with the amount of time students spend in school they'll have some free time to surf the web on their own - that's good, not bad.
Sure, you can't rely on students teaching themselves. But, to act to directly prevent it is utter madness. Everyone is at least somewhat self taught - trying to take that away will produce significantly less functional human beings.
Someone already posted this, but it can't be overemphasized: I'm sure that Encyclopedia Americana was still available in the school library. If not, I'm sure that they wouldn't confiscate it if you brought a copy to school.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
People are fallible. Better block anything and everything if all you wish students to access is "credible" sources.
Gotta love the state of education when students need to be protected from critical thinking.
What's stopping them from having a Wikipedia Pro or something site that a-la-Facebook can be directed only to school networks and they can be moderated by librarians or who ever. Point being it would be tied into existing user accounts for regular users and for admin users. Seems good enough if it were done properly. Every school on the system would be able to see the articles edited by any or all of the schools. Something much bigger than plain-old-Wikipedia, which would be a fall back in case there are articles that haven't been edited by a Pro user.
This is my United States of whatever.
At my school, it seems to be a general idea that Wikipedia cannot be used as a source of information due to it's possible inaccuracy. However, students including myself are smart enough to think for themselves and use the view the sources OF the wikipedia article and see what those have to offer us. We don't have to cite wiki, and we still get the same information. Eventually you could do this until you ended up at the original source anyway, just have to backtrack until you get a legitimate source.
This concept reminds me of the idea of security theatre, or that it is easier and more effective to make people feel like you're doing something to protect them, rather than actually doing the protecting. If folks seriously claim Wikipedia should be blocked because it may contain non-credible information, then not only should they whitelist-only and block essentially the entire Internet, I would wager that published, physical books sometimes contain non-credible information. Though the demands of the publishing process may reduce this likelyhood, it's not like there's never been a challenge to what a book says. Heck, isn't that what book-burnings were for?
There is a lot of anti-Wikipedia bad blood in society at the moment, it seems, and it's really quite a shame. The fact that anyone can edit it is nearly wholly a non-issue: middle- and high-schoolers who haven't been explained techniques of research and credibility have been citing Geocities pages for years now anyway, and at least with Wikipedia there's a Recent Changes list that people tend to watch for fun, or so I'm told.
If the block is acknowledged as being done to "make parents feel better," then I would suspect insufficient leadership but would somewhat understand. Saying it is blocked because it may be non-credible, however, completely lays bare some serious fundamental misunderstandings about the Internet and global decentralized communication in general.
I recognize people by their sigs. Is that a bad thing?
Wikipedia contains errors. But so does most every dictionary (try looking up atheist and you'll find the Christian definition, which is about as definitive of an atheist as an atheist's definition of a Christian is of a Christian. Atheism is the lack of a belief, or to quote someone sharp, "If atheism is a belief system, then bald is a hair color.") Standard printed encyclopedias and textbooks contain errors. The news media contains errors. Political speech contains errors. Court pronouncements and laws contain errors. Parental and teacher mandates and teachings contain errors. tests contain errors. School boards make errors (and how!) Newspapers contain errors. Even the editors of Slashdot make mistakes (cough.)
Wikipedia, however, is one of the few sources that continually tries to approach accuracy, and where you can find an error repaired literally seconds after you detect it - or you can fix it yourself, if you understand the problem.
So why, again, is it that wikipedia must be banned?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I just don't know where to begin...why not also block the New York Times, since its content might possibly contain errors as well.
TWR
Which is still a different thing from what I'm saying there. Yes, kids still have civil right. No, the right to have wikipedia accessible on the school network, is _not_ a civil right.
If someone decreed that school kids are forbidden to talk about Wikipedia, or to read Wikipedia even at home, _then_ you'd have a violation of their civil rights. If someone was expelled for contributing to Wikipedia at home, then you'd have a civil rights violation. If someone mandated nanny software to keep homes with kids away from Wikipedia, then, yeah, you might have a civil rights problem.
Its being blocked by the school's proxy? No, it's not a civil rights violation. It's just how the packets are routed on one particular network, really, not some global interdiction. And certainly noone proposed to seize and search the kids' homes/laptops/pdas/whatever either.
Plus, what all this "auugh, censorship is evil" whine misses is: the school simply does not have any constitutional obligation to be a general-purpose ISP. They just aren't one. They just have to teach. They give you the materials to use, or access to them, and are allowed to make judgment calls as to what sources they allow. If they decide that you can't quote the Bible on your biology term paper, or Wikipedia on the history paper, that's that. If they decide you're not allowed to pull out a Bible and read it during math class, or that you're not to surf Wikipedia during whatever class, that's that too. You can still read either at home, just not during class.
They're not even supposed to be some global gateway to all information. They have a very narrowly defined list of stuff they have to teach. And if you want to study something else, or with other materials, tough shit, you'll have to do it at home on your own time. You can't demand that your primary school teacher helps you study quantum mechanics, or that the school library must get a copy of whatever book just for you. If they don't have it, tough luck, you'll have to get it on their own. Their not offering a particular book or web page isn't censorship, since noone forbade you to read it at home.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Wikipedias's strength is *not* as a collection of authoritative sources but as as an introductory point to a topic, a *starting* point.
For a school to block it is *absurd*, pick just about anything and do a look up on Wikipedia and Google. Which is a better starting point? with Wikipedia you have an outline of the item, generally a presentation of multiple POVs, links for more / other *sources*.
Wikipedia is a great *starting point*.
I suppose they would be stupid enough not to block answers.com, reference.com or any of the other pages mirroring wikipedia and thus still allow full access to the information.
Wikipedia is a great resource and starting point: You only have to be cautious about it and confirm the information elsewhere. Instead of blocking wikipedia they should inform their students about how what reliable information is.
Some people believe in Santa Claus. Others believe in a god. I believe in this story!
What has to be taught is not that censorship can stop information - because it can't. It is that regardless of the information source, you must be critical and re-check that the information you get from one source can be verified from another source. And when you write anything yourself - don't forget to include the sources that you have been using, because that will help others when they are going to validate your work.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I really don't see the objection--there's plenty of unreliable stuff on the internet and, even, in high school libraries--why single out Wikipedia? Wikipedia, though rough and variable in its coverage, is at least as good as most student encyclopedias in many areas. Hunh?
Does this school district block CreationWiki?, Conservapedia?
Discuss in less than 500 words.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
I don't see the big deal. If you're so worried about your rights as an American, then go home an use the internet. Or stop being a cheapskate and pay for wireless internet for your laptop through your cell phone provider and then you can Wikipedia from the bathroom stall. Shoot, I remember the day when schools had no internet to block.
IIRC, most of the wikipedia vandalism is done during school-hours. So, I'm ambivalent: the kids lose a great source of back-ground info (and I happen to believe that it's one of the greatest) which is balanced by it potentially becoming more reliable.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
I go to a school that uses computers heavily,* and has censorware, so I can relate. Also, the initial reason is that some idiot got looking at porn on a school computer four years ago. Overreacting, much?
Wikipedia is not censored, but sites such as Google Video, (adult) Doomworld, (violence) and even GPF! (porn) Nobody likes the censor, anyway.
Also, is the issue of non-educational sites and games. While it is a school rule, I find that games can be great stress relievers. The point of the rule is supposedly that people would use all their computer time for games rather than homework, but I feel that using games as I have described is valid. (If I'm grumpy- a frequent occurrence, I won't be doing any work anyways.) It seems people are enforcing the rule for the rule's sake alone. There are always exceptions to any rule. *The school is Alameda Community Learning Center, by the way.
Well thank God you solved the problem of violence - now that they don't have The Internet facilitating their violent urges, everyone is safe, right?
(You missed the existence of violent urges in the first place as being the problem, right?)
I was suspended for accessing Wikipedia. The resaon being is that I bypassed our schools "restrictions" by going to Wikipedia through a proxy server.
A sad world we live in today.
So they block Wikipedia, which has a huge amount of very valuable information on it, in favour of other sites which in my opinion are not so good. For example the Microsoft funded one that a lot of schools seem to use defines reverse engineering in a very negative light. Some commercial sites about religion in America have a very notable Christian bias which isn't so good when you're meant to be providing information about non-Christian religions.
Wikipedia helps by allowing people who should know to comment, and if you want an idea about whether the information is right or controversial you look at the talk pages. If anything this will teach people to question and try to understand what they're reading and what the motives of the author may be.
IMHO, your school is totally flat wrong, reckless and closed minded. Do you not think they can/will use these resources for homework?
Rather than ban one possibly wrong/slanted source, you should bring in tabloid papers, broadsheets, encyclopedia's, TV news, history books, and some general political propaganda (WW2? current middle east?) and other sources you can think of. You should then say "There are great resources for learning, but everyone/thing has an agenda, caters for an audience, or is trying to sell advertising space". IE Wikipedia is great, its not necessarily always correct and sometimes very slanted, but so is everything else.
Your meant to be preparing children for the real world, not teaching them facts (which are generally not very useful at all). IMHO a lot (not all) teachers actually don't fully live in the real world.
This would be infinitely better than teaching the students to rely on "authoritative" sources uncritically. Especially from a democratic point of view.
Best solution is to teach the difference between a primary source and secondary sources and put a simple rule on papers being unable to pass if they rely on only secondary sources. There is a similar consideration to be applied from reliability.
Wikipedia is an outstanding source for research. There have been countless slashdot stories on scientific articles in so called primary research sources that promised faster-than-light travel, antigravity or non-conservation of impulse. Yet, vandalized wikipedia articles are corrected in a matter of days and locked until the controversy subsides. You are far more likely to get duped reading a textbook or a scientific magazine than wikipedia, and a quick look on top ten matches on Google will guard against these rare cases. Face it, Internet is the king for getting up to date, accurate information as long as you have common sense research skills.
Speaking as a victim of NCLB, this comment is probably the most truthful i've seen all day.
(The schools I went to literally cut their gifted program just because they needed more funding for the special ed classes.)
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Generally when something is on paper, it has been reviewed for inaccuracy before it becomes an acceptable source for education. Real encyclopedias have a review process that makes a good attempt at getting it right the first time and they stake their reputation on it. This doesn't mean there aren't mistakes or outdated information but there are ways of dealing with that too.
With wikipedia, it is a guess at who is right and wrong and the credential being used to fact check them have been question several times. The difference is night and day. Think of it like this, Louis L'Amour wrote stories with facts in them but we cannot guarantee anything was factually told in them. It might be a good way of getting acquainted with a time in history but isn't a history book or an encyclopedia. Using Wiki is similar to ready a Louis L'Amour books at the moment.
And to put it bluntly, yeas something written on paper, by the time it is used for schools or considered accurate has been better reviewed and researched. Anything disputed would be noted and likely corrected. Wiki doesn't have a formal process for this that meets the same standards for reliability. And this is a reason school libraries are out of date, It takes time to verify these things.
If you do that, you should just modify EVERY SINGLE web page.
(as wiki several notches higher on the credibility scale than your average "first page in google results" page.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
You don't have any freedom in the USA! There is some false sense of freedom, based on the fact that nobody has intervened yet. As soon as something is blocked or otherwise done to limit your "freedom", there is an exception made to the general ruling of "freedom".
That is not freedom.
If Wikipedia is not a credible source of information because it is user created, then teachers are not a credible source of information either since they may have a bias on the teacher material. Traditional dictionaries and encyclopedias, along with all other facts and references, are information created by people, who are analogous to "users". If they want to say wikipedia is not credible, then they need to find a better reason, like the fact that wikipedia can be edited on the fly without peer review. Banning wikipedia won't do much other than to show students that the administration is behind the times. I'm not saying wikipedia is a good reference, just that it isn't necessarily worse than other resources that schools accept without question.
If the school decided that Wikipedia is a source not to be trusted, thus it must be blocked, why stop only at Wikipedia? There are numerous sites out there that are less than reliable with regards to information.
In my opinion, blocking a site because it's unreliable is stupid. What these schools should do is educate their students (what a concept!), and tell them that Wikipedia might not always be a credible information-source, and tell them to dig deeper into the subject that the school wants them to investigate.
What I mean is that they tell these students that they can use Wikipedia, but not as the only source, and that the students should always fact-check before adding information into their papers.
But that would probably mean that these students actually use their brains... we can't that to happen, can we?
80 CC D8 AF AE D3 AB 54 B7 2E CE 67 C7
... so should slashdot.
Which school? Where?
why would Einsteins notes be in German? He was an American you idiot.
:)
I read that somewhere....
-- QED
> The reason given was that Wikipedia (being user created and edited) did not represent a credible
> or reliable source of information for schools.
Thing is, that's true. Wikipedia is not a *reliable* source of information. (No tertiary source is ever really reliable.) Neither is Google. Do they block that? Textbooks are *terribly* unreliable -- have they banned those from school yet? I suspect not. As far as that goes, the schools aren't really a reliable source of information, either. I'm pretty sure at least a third of the stuff I learned in elementary school turned out to be untrue.
The thing is, unreliable sources of information can nonetheless be very, very *useful*, due to their tremendous convenience and, in particular, their availability. If we had to track down primary sources for everything, we'd spend our whole lives and never learn enough to finish third grade.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
There are honor classes. But should your child take one of these the grade averaged in as any other class is. If an "average" student took the class they would flunk. So the honors student takes a GPA hit to learn something of interest.
Our public school system is the product of a broken government / legal system. (I'm not sure which broke first.)
Nothing is foolproof, fools are too ingenious. - Murphy
Reviewed by groups like the Kansas school board.
Critical thinking needs to be applied to all sources of information.
Nothing is foolproof, fools are too ingenious. - Murphy
Any information is good if you can interpret it correctly. if only considering the teaching of ideas primary sources are not needed, as long as a idea is transferred efficiently between the masses. The only reason to track down the primary source is to further understand the source's thinking which led to that idea, but then no idea is truly original. personal influence is no longer relevant when it is now easier to ask for the opinion of the masses. Thus by raising the base standard of the understanding of the masses the accuracy of the information will improve as they 'filter' it. In short: HELL NO!
I don't know about anyone else, but I was only allowed to cite ONE encyclopedia anyways until like 6th grade. Then it changed to NO encyclopedias.
Also, a reason to block Wikipedia isn't poor quality, it's explicit content. Don't believe me? Look up "vagina." On the other hand, the filtered versions that can be gotten on DVD WOULD be nice.
Education isn't simply about regurgitating facts found elsewhere.
Isn't the POINT of a 'liberal' (in the academic arts sense, not the political sense) education to teach the students to reason, to be able to measure the value of the information they are getting, to filter it as necessary to draw useful conclusions?
Seems to me that Wikipedia is EXACTLY the perfect tool to teach about how information is presented and how one should read with care toward the author's biases and intent. LIKE EVERY OTHER SOURCE OF INFORMATION (such as encyclopedias and books), Wiki authors are generally altruistic in intent but everyone has inherent biases. Further, some are not so altruistic. With books and reference works, the recycle time is long and slow between editions. With wiki it's very fast, sometimes hours. So in a sense Wiki is the 'hothouse' version of every other reference work.
I think it's an excellent educational tool, both as a reference (cited original sources and generally good summaries of knowledge-to-date) and as a meta-example of the potential dangers of simply absorbing facts without thinking critically about their source.
-Styopa
Why not teach them the difference between a scholarly source and one that may or may not have any merit? In college we were expected to know the difference, and if we quoted an unreliable source, points were taken off the essay or paper. If we quoted from a source that sometimes was unreliable, sometimes reliable, like Reader's Digest, the student might have to defend the source based on the author's credentials. I did this in one paper I wrote and got credit for using that source. Another student quoted from Reader's Digest and got points taken off. I made the argument for the source before I turned in the paper (before it was graded). The other student did not.
Wikipedia might give students a lead on information so they can look for a quotable and reliable source, so what's the problem here? Otherwise, you would have to block most of the Internet.
Is something written on paper better reviewed, researched or accurate. Most schools libraries are underfunded and out of date.
The answer is that unlike Wikipedia, books have known authors (and I'm talking about factual books here), known publishers and editors who are answerable for errors of fact, and do not change moment by moment in response to ignorance, prejudice, "the wisdom of crowds" or whatever bullshit arguments are used including appeals to "community", appeals to authority, appeals to popularity, appeals to bizarre and slippery concepts like NPOV, "notability" or anything else.
That isn't to say that books are perfect or that they are not in need of revision and update, but its a whole lot better than the spectacular MMORPG of human knowledge known as Wikipedia.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
One of the things Wikipedia is good for is finding links to more reliable sites, and finding books to look up, as you said, at the library.
Wikipedia is a perfectly valid source of research information if it is coroberated by other sources JUST LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE. The encyclopedia may be wrong, the textbook may be wrong, the dictionary may be wrong, books in the library may be wrong, and wikipedia may be wrong. In all probability they won't all be wrong.
If the schools aren't teaching students about fact checking and judging the reliability of a source, they are failing. Unfortunatly, that is exactly the case. That's why adults, after 12 years of schooling, still can't see through all of the political lies out there, spot bias in media or even realise that commercials are full of crap.
The better approach would be for schools to actually do their jobs and provide students with a solid foundation in fact checking and then ENCOURAGE them to consider wikipedia as a potential source. Any research paper that relies on a single source, no matter what that source is, should lose points. The only exception is cases where there is only one source. In that case, the paper should reflect an appropriate skepticism.
These are skills that every single person needs to have if they are to participate meaningfully in our democracy or in our economy. Simply blocking Wikipedia and teaching a doctrine of encyclopedic infallibility is a huge failure.
The downside is that they might go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofellatio and giggle a bit.
To the minds of many parents in the US, their child's visiting that page will have corrupted them irreparably for life.
Note to mods: I'm not joking.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Any quick fix interaction beat banging my head on a brick wall that was my final year project.
Now I am stuck on RSS feeds, has there been any progress in 13 years, or do I have a bored addictive personality "disorder". I add disorder to get the trolls saying that is a tendency within the normal range, not of medical note.
Actually wise guys are there decent 12 step programs to ween you off, alcohol, drugs [prescription and non prescription], gambling etc that do not seem to be run by people who just say its obviously your fault if the program did not work for you.
I am actually bipolar and searching for non drug solutions [while still taking the drugs]. But hey adding real problems just seems to spoil the post and makes me seem needier than I am.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
This is bollocks. If you're worried about possible innacuracy, what are you doing using the internet for research? For that matter, what are you doing reading anything? NOTHING you read is guaranteed to be accurate. It's all about probability.
If something is reported by the BBC, it's very likely to be accurate, but they've made mistakes before. If I read something technical on Cisco's website, it's very likely to be accurate because they're a professional company. If I read a Wikipedia article that I judge not to have been retardedly vandalized, it's pretty likely to be mostly accurate. What makes you think the cited sources, or non-internet sources are any more accurate? This attitude irritates me.
Instead of trying to eliminate sources of information that aren't guaranteed to be accurate (hint: that's all of 'em), you should be trying to think about how likely something is to be accurate, and examining multiple sources to check whether they correlate. If you're gonna read just one source, though, Wikipedia is as decent (if not more so) as most matches on Google.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Your old Rights 1.0 have been made totally obsolete by the new Right's Rights 2.0.
1. You have the right to go shopping. Whenever, whereever, however.
2. You have the right to stop criticizing the Administration during time of war. For the troops, or for the children, take your pick.
3. It's always a time of war.
4. We were wrong about Torture, it's actually kinda fun, if not particularly useful. And anyhow, cruel and unusual has changed over time. Go watch Sopranos or 24 and shut up...or better yet... go shopping.
There are more rights in Rights 2.0, but you're going to be too busy watching TV, shopping, commuting 2 hours each way, and spending time in court ajudicating the foreclosure of your house due to the 19% interest on your 2/28 sub-prime loan, so don't bother yourself to learn them.
It's unstoppable. It is a paradigm shift, they feel it, but yet they can't do anything about it and can't comprehend what exactly it means and how to handle it. So they are just trolling about it. But the world has changed once again, and new generations do not care. Wikipedia is much more accurate then any other similar source of information (e.i. Britannica). There are tens of edits on major articles a day there days, news finds its way into db in just few minutes. Teachers and scholars feel that, they know that we do not need them anymore, we do not need their scritps and books. Smart and information hungry children are browsing and feeding from Wikipedia themselves.
Amen. You wouldn't believe what an unholy nightmare the system is if (god forbid) you actually take initiative and try to accelerate your curriculum like I did, and I went to high school long before No Child Left Behind.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Netcraft has confirmed it. Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica are bad.
Friends don't let friends line-dance.
Yet again, the massive lobbying power of the encyclopedia companies is warping American society. When will their corrupt power games end?
But seriously, folks, keeping information from kids is crappy pedagogy. We live in an age of abundance. Unless we start teaching kids how to operate in such an environment and do their own filtering, we'll wind up with a nation of drooling idiots who passively accept whatever is shoveled to them by TV news, political candidates, and their government. Come to think of it, perhaps it's already too late.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
They could eventually be part of the review process. But usually it is paid auditors that check for accuracy against other sources first. Besides, What the Kansas school board did wasn't factually incorrect they just jumbled the subject that the matter should be discussed in.
Schools (of all stripes, secondary/postsecondary/etc.) are already being perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be outmoded to some extent. The picture of a large, cumbersome, and reactionary institution is the picture most of us have as schools. Of course that isn't always true, but it is an ingrained part of our culture.
A move like this just reinforces that sort of a view of schools: Outdated institutions struggling to maintain a status quo. Wikipedia has its advantages and disadvantages in the realm of scholarship. But you can't just ban it, especially not nowadays. This is outright censorship of the most silly sort, and it should not be tolerated.
Schools have a responsibility to maintain some standards, and whether or not they will accept Wikipedia in papers, etc. is a decision they will have to make. But I hope they relize that by publically banning Wikipedia, they are merely raising the appeal for Wikipedia and decrease respect for their own institution.
Assuming that censorship is necessary...Of all the things the school could possibly censor, Wikipedia is one of the least justifiable to censor.
The better approach would be for schools to actually do their jobs and provide students with a solid foundation in fact checking and then ENCOURAGE them to consider wikipedia as a potential source.
I'd go further than that: yes, wikipedia is unreliable, of course it is. But it is a known quantity. If you block it, where will the students who used wikipedia for everything get there answers? Maybe from cheat sites, or from uncyclopedia, or from random blogs!
If the teacher finds the wikipedia entries related to the homework incorrect, discuss why in Class and assign students the task of improving the entries as part of their homework. Or at least of drafting new text to be discussed in class.
When the first horseless carriages were introduced, law-makers in some parts of the world required that someone walk in front of the new vehicle carrying a red flag. Part of this was because of a huge financial lobby on the part of the horse-and-cart industry (!) which in the end died out completely because of its RIAA-style stupidity, and part of it was a fear of the new technology. But even where such laws are still on the books they are now seen as representing fears of the small-minded. To be fair, thousands upon thousands of people die every year in horseless-carriage fights, so maybe really those people were right, but either way they are gone and forgotten.
The future is shaped by those who are not afraid.
Live barefoot!
free engravings/woodcuts
If we block Wikipedia because the risk of "errors" and "bad information", then we must close before FOX TV, NewYork Times and similar media, also the Bush Administration. Do you remember massive weapons in Irak? An error in Wikipedia is solve after half day, and not cause the destruction of a country.
If you are going to say "Wikipedia (being user created and edited) did not represent a credible or reliable source of information for schools..." you might as well say that school boards should also be banned from making decision since they are user created and edited and are composed of a bunch of windbags making unsubstantiated claims. Indeed so many educational decisions are made in a presence of a lot of peer reviewed literature showing their policies to be failed ones. But of course no-one challenged them there.
Did they do a study to show that Wikipedia is so much worse than other sources of information at the school?
As someone who has used Wikipedia a lot I can say that it is a valuable source of information. There are not too many other websites that you can use as a starting point to research a topic. A lot of the time there is way more information than Encyclopedia Britannica or anywhere else. Firstly you can corroborate the claims it makes. There is a great effort going on to cite sources that you can check.
Secondly when there are errors they tend to get cleared up. Articles are constantly edited. In fact you might call Wikipedia the Most Peer Reviewed journal in the world. Thirdly quite often one finds out information from Wikipedia that one would not have been aware of because being aware of it would require having done a PhD in the subject. Yet some important details can put a whole subject into perspective.
If I want to know about some subject quite often simply googling it provides very little. I have often gone into a library and asked a librarian for some books on some subject and unless I can tell them the title they are very often unable to recommend me one. Recently I was looking for information on public ownership of the airwaves. Well Wikipedia helped to start the project rolling. It often helps to index a lot of information on the Internet.
I also winder what is so great about allowing newspaper access. The press exaggerates or misunderstands things all the time. Why don't we ban them? Is Britannica peer reviewed? Nope it isn't. Neither is the New York Times. The schools should be teaching students how to critically analyze information. When they see a claim so they see an argument justifying it? Is the argument internally consistent? Does it source its information? Can you look up the source? Is there contradictory evidence elsewhere? Indeed if schools could use Wikipedia to home such skills further enhancing students' education.
To me this represents an attack on authority. The Schoolboard and indeed many other institutions need the façade of authority to get by. Wikipedia represents a meritocracy as opposed to arbitrary authority. And schools quite often despite what they say do not want free thinking students questioning everything.
More seriously, you have no guaranteed right to access the internets from a government facility. Students have no right to direct the work of the school. Neither of these are rights that have been guaranteed in the constitution or held up in court.
Actually, according to Hazelwood Sch. Dist. v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988) - students don't even have the right to publish text which runs counter to the educational goals of the school district - when that text could reasonably seen as being endorsed by the school. Ie. - School speeches, School newspapers, etc. Schools (below the college level) like airports, are government buildings with a specific purpose. The U.S. gov't is not bound to allow protests or protest speech, or free speech at all - in the classroom durring lessons, in an airport ever, in common areas of prisons, in police stations, and in court houses. This isn't seen as a first amendment breach beacause (dur) allowing unfettered speech in those environments would defeat the gov't purpose for which they were built. Schools can't teach over student protest, etc.
Now, how much more attenuated is your free speech argument when the students aren't even the speakers. The school has the right to block the broadcast of messages into a school building. We don't allow porn in schools. Objection to that? Is your objection method or quality of use? Do you assume that a student cannot seek out access to these sites at home? Do you think the school must support any use of the internet, even when it encourages students to engage in behavior which will cause them difficulties in college (citing Wikipedia for example)?
Do you actually have a policy argument other than your inflated view of the First Amendment as a guarantor of any speech any where any time (which is patently false in our society)?
-GiH
I'm not bothering to cite sources for you (sorry, busy) but there has been a great deal of complaining in the academic press over the last decade or so that our schools are still churning out factory workers. The purpose of education is to produce the workers out country needs - and yet students graduating from HS can't program or participate in problem solving exercises until after they get untrained by four years in college where they're taught to think differently.
-GiH
Formally known as "argumentum ad autoritatem" or argument based on authority. In this case, the school is saying Wikipedia has no authority, therefore all it's information is drivel. This is logically equivalent to saying "Einstein is an authority, therefore what he has to say about restaurant management is necessarily correct."
The only logically valid approach is to argue based on the evidence, in other words by evaluating any given article in Wikipedia on its own merits. Of course, that would involve some actual thinking and scholarship, which the school principal is evidently not interested in.
Other people have commented brilliantly on the censorship irony, so I won't even get started on that, but, I mean, Jeeeeeeeeee-sus.
Three issues:
In fact, come to think of it, every time I've cited Wikipedia in a paper, I've gotten an A on it. Better, for some of those papers I've received "course citations" -- special notes of positive recognition which are recorded on my transcript. One other professor made a point of stopping me and saying, "This is really a very good paper. Could you make an extra copy of it for me?" I call that success, n'est-ce pas?
I don't just cite Wikipedia, of course. I cite academic papers too. But those papers often don't spell out the basics -- so as an undergrad trying to apply more advanced math, I need some background, and Wikipedia provides that. (Textbooks would too, but it's quicker to go to the Wikipedia article -- and the Wikipedia article is often just as useful if not more). So in the spirit of full disclosure (and the Academic Honor Code), I cite all my sources. That means that, if I need to figure out how the Quaternions work and Wikipedia tells me, I cite Wikipedia.
Admittedly, I'm not researching history or some politically-loaded subject. I'm researching something which benefits from Wikipedia's huge nerd bias. Wikipedia is much more than an encyclopedia: Will I find a complete description of the quaternions in the Encyclopedia Brittanica? What about particle filters? How about the naive Bayes classifier or the ensemble Kalman filter? Wikipedia has those articles! If I go to the article titled State space (controls), Wikipedia goes so far as to show the nonlinear state-space model for a pendulum. I am sure Brittanica doesn't give that.
Librarians keep insisting that people use the Internet as we used Old Media. But it just doesn't work the same. What if some guy on the gamedev.net forum helps me out by sharing an idea with me; should I not cite him? I make a point of including proper footnotes, even for sources like that. Then, it's up to me to make that source authoritative -- by doing a correctness proof in the paper, for example. It takes a little legwork -- but if you immediately write off sources of information like that, you ignore most of the power of the Internet that Old Media lacked. Random, unpublished people know a lot of stuff. You need to verify it often, but it's still useful (and "verification" doesn't necessarily mean "appealing to authority"). As many posters have said, it sometimes just takes critical thinking.
I'd say the teachers should, in *EVERY* class, assign a Web research assignment, and then go over every assignment, in class, and point out which sources are good, which are questionable and *WHY* they're questionable, and which are complete disinformation.
It's called "teaching critical thinking', boyos and grrrllls.
mark
Wikipedia is VERY useful as a reference or start point. Teach the kids to use it to find places to find information. Don't allow them to cite Wikipedia as a source. If they find something useful in an entry, that info *should* list its source. The student should follow the link, verify the validity of the info and cite *that* as a source. Simple.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
This is about the Wikipedia policy of "not being censored." This is about kids looking at Wikipedia articles that may contain pictures that would normally be blocked. For example, articles about the human body. This is all about articles that may contain pictures of unclothed bodies.
At least that's how I see it....
Even including all of those vandalized wikis that just go "**** **** ...", the information to misinformation ratio on Wikipedia is much better than the knowledge base of any high school student I've ever met. Just because it's not necessarily as accurate as a book doesn't mean that it's worthless and should be shielded from children.
Should we set an age limit on tabloids just because almost every article that goes "New Cancer Cure ____" is bogus?
Wikipedia is a great way to teach children how to check sources and have them think critically. When they get into college those are the skills they are going to need. When I read books I'm lazy and don't check the facts and just accept them, which is a big mistake. On Wikipedia I'm on my toes and I rarely get misinformation because I filter it all out.
You're only teaching kids to be sheep and just accept everything they are told from a credible source. There are a lot of credible sources out there that say crazy stuff and children need to know better and challenge those people.
You're school is teaching your kids to be soft, uninquiring, subserviant, and complacent. Your school obviously doesn't think highly of it's students to feel that they need to shield them so much.
"Man, I am so unbelievably stupid."
As the original poster, I can tell you the following.
After sniffing around a little and making some inquiries of people who are in a higher position within the county, I think I've finally found out the "true" reason for this. I was told that, since our school board has paid a hefty access rights cost to World Book Online, it was decided to remove access to Wikipedia. It seems that some higher-ups were upset that they've shelled out the money for students to use an online encyclopedia, and that practically no one was using it! So, rather than investigate why people wanted to use Wikipedia so much more than World Book Online, they decide to remedy the situation by taking away Wikipedia.
Frankly, I believe that entirely. When I emailed the IT rep at the county level, and gave her a list of about 10 or so legitimate mathematical processes (such as the Rational Root Theorem, Synthetic Division, Euler's Method, etc), none of which is available on World Book but which is easily readable on Wikipedia, I got a staid and trite reply that basically repeated the "not credible like an encyclopedia" mantra and didn't address my particular points.
Oh well, we've managed since two months ago when I submitted this story. Some of us, being more knowledgable about computers and the internet than the usual lemming teachers around us, have found creative methods of still retrieving the information from Wikipedia we need to be effective teachers. (For example, I saw a handy way of processing a cubic spline based upon a Wikipedia article, which I proved by hand myself during my lunch break to make sure it worked, and then taught it to my students.)
I wonder if World Book has an article on proxies....
Londovir
Londovir
Wikipedia is an excellent souce for basic info in many science and other academic subjects. Just as with books differing information than a school board thinks should not be taught, this school seems to think that all wikipedia should be ban? Gosh, now we are banning everything just because of somebody's own moral code. IT smacks of book burning to me and is, at the same time, saying that our teachers are nto mature eoungh to teach right from wrong.
Retired dinosaur, simple user, volunteer, guinea pig
I think we've discovered the real problem, right here.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
In practice yes, that is what they are - not what they're supposed to be, but what they are: an industrial system of education producing workers for an industrial economy. I believe they should do far more than teach students to be future workers; indeed that they should only do that to the extent that it is necessary for those students to become citizens in society. But of course you're right that if wish to train them for a post-industrial or knowledge economy (slippery concepts though those are), they are failing even at that level.
My position on citizenship may seem inconsistent, given that I believe schools do such a poor job of going beyond basic skills that they do actual harm, a problem that they may be institutionally incapable of solving. Let me say instead that the education of a human being must be founded on the learning and practice of citizenship. And in our society, we have assigned tho lion's share of education to schools. We must either find a way for schools to do the job, or realize that the most essential dimension of eduaction must take place elsewhere. I suspect we need the latter: we need communities that educate, not bureaucracies. We have asked our bureaucracies to play the role of communities, and they are predictably failing. But just as communities create citizens, they are also made of and by citizens. Where are our citizens to come from? The problem appears to be a catch-22.
In order to accelerate the current pace of decline in US "intelligence", thay puny batch of American students who may be curious about what goes on in the world must be directed to the appropriate "journalism brands" such as CNN/BBC/Fox, or Reagan's favourite: Reader's Digest.
After all, they always get it right, don't they?
I used to care; the last 25 years were tragic. I don't care anymore, and I have a growing appreciation for comedy.
If we want to protect our children from misinformation, we should block whitehouse.gov.
All this will do, literally, is further screw poor kids with the digital divide. Does anyone honestly think this will be an issue for rich kids? They have computers at home. Or if the school is moving towards wifi hotspots (many are), they have a laptop. Hell, the rich kids might even have cellular internet on their laptops. So typically it's only the POOR kids that don't have access to computers at home or elsewhere that use the school computers. So by screwing their ability to do research, we're just increading the divide between rich and poor. Of course, that seems to be a major policy goal of the current government (I include both Democrats and Republicans in this).
Uh, no. Applied computer networks, sure. But to call "anonymous browsing" computer science is akin to calling bricklaying "engineering".
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
It's pretty interesting that a school district chooses to block Wikipedia at this time
Over at Wikipedia I'm a sysop and a couple of days ago launched a project where experienced editors offer guidance to teachers and professors who incorporate Wikipedia writing assignments into their classrooms. It gives the students a chance at publication (which is more satisfying than leaving an old term paper to crumble in a drawer) and, we hope, will foster more well cited improvements to the online encyclopedia.
The project is called WikiProject Classroom coordination and its Wikipedia search abbreviation is WP:WPCC.
Parents and educators are welcome to pay us a visit.
> If someone cites Wikipedia or sites like it gets a lower grade, ...
I wonder if they would get a lower grade if they cited Britanica, as comparison by Nature showed it was not more accurate then Wikipedia, at least in scientific matters.
My son is 12 years old. He uses Wikipedia and we encourage him. When he sees something that's not accurate he knows there's an "edit" button and he fixes it. It he's not sure he doesn't (and he knows he can raise the issue in the discussion page).
There's no such thing as "100% accurate information" (well, except perhaps the RFCeditor site, if what you claim is the "RFC says blah"). There are many mistakes in Wikipedia. E.g.,I just corrected several false "facts" in the "planar graphs" entry a few weeks ago. There are also mistakes in other sources but I cannot correct them. Does that make them more credible?
Another story: a colleague of mine (quite a few years ago) has taught a course from an old and very famous book. Some students questioned a proof and he insisted that that were the proof. The next time he openned the lecture with an apology and said that the book was wrong. And then he went on to explain that he grew up in an environment that worshipped the "word of the book" as unquestionable truth (communist Russia) so he haven't considered the possibility that the book could be wrong.
And yet another story: I know a book by a respected mathematican published by a respected publisher (AMS), that has a trivial mistake in the first theorem in page 1. There's a trivial counter example. The rest of the math in the book depends on this first theorem, so it's a whole book full of proofs that rely on a wrong fact! It's not Wikipedia. It's a peer reviewed scientific publication by an expert in the field. But it's useless for anyone except those that don't realize the first theorem is wrong. There are many examples in math of published results that turned up to be wrong.
Teaching students that no source of info can be trusted to be 100% accurate and that they can contribute themselves to inproving accuracy is a far more valuable lesson than blocking them from using peer reviewd sources like Wikipedia.
Well... I should really stop here, but just one more story:
A few days ago my 12 years old son had some assignment and the teacher provided several sources on the web (non of which was Wikipedia). One of the sources was an assignment posted by a student, and simple Google searches revealed that it was a cut & paste job from various other websites. several of the sources had large parts copied from Wikipedia...