Jimmy Wales about using Wikipedia in school researches
Via The Wired Campus it can be found an article from BBC pages titled Students ’should use Wikipedia’. In his text Alistair Coleman presenting the problem of using Wikipedia in a school and academic research.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said teachers who refuse younger students access to the site are “bad educators”. In his opinion Wikipedia should be seen as a “stepping stone” to other sources..
A year ago Wales told educators that Wikipedia must not be a source used in the research work, according to the lack of quality in the articles.
Jimmy Wales, photo by Andrew Lih (CC)
Therefore now Wales would critize history department at Middlebury College where using Wikipedia in the research papers is banned. In the opinion of Don Wyatt, chair of the department, even though Wikipedia may have some value, particularly from the value of leading students to citable sources, it is not itself an appropriate source for citation. Wikipedia is a good place to start the research (to get know about generally idea of the fact or unknown word, or to find the first basic direction in making choise of bibliography. But not to cite from articles (opened to free anonymous edition) in the academic research, where generally there is no place for the footnotes taken from encyclopedias.
Read more:
Wikipedia’s Founder Says the Site Has a Place in Academe
Wikipedia as primary source for professional historical research? The case of on-line IPN catalogue
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Kategorie: In english / Narzędzia
I also support teaching students how to use Wikipedia instead of asking students to pretend it doesn’t exist. In fact, I’m going to follow the example of Mills Kelly (Edwired) and have my students write Wikipedia articles in the coming semester.