Kohl definately shows the double edged sword in collaborative efforts to share information, such as Wikipedia, as most of us have undoubtly already encountered in our college careers. As far as I understand, most of our professors refrain from us doing at least a good portion of our research on Wikipedia, as they consider it to be false advertising for 100% accurate information on absolutley everything. I even had a history student-teacher refer to Wikipedia as "the devil." On the other hand, I had other professors say at the very least it provides a good stopping ground for referrences for research. I myself have never entangled in Wikipedia for research projects, mostly based on fear of what my professors told me. I mostly use it for quick refernces for random trivia, such as if I want to find out which actor appeared in a certain movie, or who sang a certain song, and random pointless crap like that. As amazing as Wikipedia is, I would probably use it as a reference for more research and not use it as primary research.
Lanham simply seemed to reinstate the fear that my professors have always told me about the digital age transfiguring more information than what is on the "authoritative" written word. Goodie. More reasons given to me to try to avoid the internet. Thank you so much, Lanhman, more ranting about how the digital age is ruining the education of our generation.
I use Wikipedia to discover other key terms I can search for more information on a topic, like you discussed here. I don't like when people go to extremes with it. Yes, everything on it may not be accurate, but that doesn't mean nothing is. If we take Kohl's article to heart, a lot of people are putting serious time and effort into constructing webpages that can teach readers about the subject.
ReplyDeletei found it interesting how this article spoke of wikipedia. I too have been warned how bad it is and how unreliable the information is. I stayed away from it during high school and my first two college years because of this. I'll be honest though...now, sometimes when i am in a hurry and i need to find out about something quick and don't want to take the time to thoroughly research it, i will go to wikipedia. I haven't had problems with it so far...but i am a little wary. i also find it interesting that it is usually the first website that pops up when i type in my search term. I'm curious to see if teachers will ever start counting it as more so reliable than they do now.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, I've taken several courses in other departments (computer science is one that particularly comes to mind here) and the professors in that department encouraged our research questions to look at and reference Wikipedia. That boggled me at first, especially since the Lit department at MSU tends to harbor a great deal of almost fear towards the world wide web, specifically Wikipedia. I'm always shocked that professors on the same campus do not discuss things like that with each other. It seems to me that people who are experts in technology (in the Computer Science department) should be the ones we take advice from on matters like this, rather than taking the witch hunt approach. :)
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