I always tell our kids not to use for all the reasons mentioned here.
When mentioning the validity I always tell them about the short period a
couple of years ago when I was called into the head's office because
someone had tinkered with our school's entry on Wikipedia and had
written something about me that couldn't have been further from the
truth. She had been sent an email on Friday regarding the
misinformation, she checked and printed it off on Saturday, but by
Monday it was gone. Yes, it had been corrected but as I pointed out to
my kids, anyone who visited the site from hopefully just Friday to
Monday would not have known the information was incorrect. As with
Laurie Anderson, it's the possibility of poor timing that can mess up
your research.
Mrs. Betty Klein
Avery Coonley School
Downers Grove, Il 60515
bklein@averycoonley.org
-----Original Message-----
From: School Library Media & Network Communications
[mailto:LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Susan Grigsby
Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 2:29 PM
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: [LM_NET] Wikipedia
Folks:
Recently we hosted author Laurie Halse Anderson at our school and she
was a
fabulous speaker! She mentioned Wikipedia to our students and I started
to
cringe until I heard her say it was a bad idea to use it. This is what I
had
been saying all along so I perked up to hear what her argument was.
She said she authored her OWN entry and when she went back a couple of
weeks
later to add something saw that her birthdate had been changed, the
number
of siblings had been changed, the timeline of her books had been
changed,
and so on. She told the kids, "If I can't be the authority on myself how
can
you trust anything on that site?" It made a big impact on the kids that
heard her speak and I've seen a drastic reduction in kids running to
that
site for quick info once word got around.
The big point is that the information is not reliable whether through
disinformation, misinformation, harmful intention or honest mistake. I
went
to an article there once and someone had managed to write POO in between
most every sentence - obvious and quickly fixed but how do you know when
the
mistake is WAY more subtle at the exact moment you happen to hit that
article? The short answer is, you can't.
--
Susan Grigsby, Teacher-Librarian
President, GLMA
Elkins Pointe Middle School
Roswell, Georgia
susan.grigsby@gmail.com
We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have
the
life that is waiting for us. - Joseph Campbell
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