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Well put. And expresses my viewpoint exactly. I give a very similar
explanation to my middle school students.

Sarah Woo
MS Librarian
Danvers, MA  0923
sarahwoo@danvers.org


On 2/3/09 10:17 AM, "Alicia Duell" <duella@RBHS208.ORG> wrote:

> Good Morning All,
>  
> I have been reading this thread with great interest, and now I feel that it's
> my turn to jump into the fray! As part of my Big6 research unit with all
> freshman and juniors, I devote a portion of one class to a discussion of
> Wikipedia. I always start off by asking them their opinions of Wikipedia. A
> few students inevitably raise their hands and grudgingly tell me that it's bad
> and unreliable. Their jaws always drop, however, when I tell them that I
> really like it and think it's incredibly useful! Some even cheer. I did NOT
> always feel this way, however, but I thought about it a lot and I believe that
> it's a little misleading to tell students that Wikipedia is a source with no
> worth or credibility. I actually think that it's a goldmine of information to
> kick off a research experience. I really and truly understand where everyone
> is coming from, however, so I say this with all due respect to my colleagues!
> I use Wikipedia in both my personal and professional life a great deal. !
>  Whenever I'm faced with researching a topic with which I'm unfamiliar, I'll
> often read the Wikipedia article for an overview of the topic, which almost
> always provides me with a multitude of helpful information: great keywords
> (names, places, subtopics, etc.); links to other Wikipedia articles which
> provide me with further useful overviews and keywords; footnotes and citations
> which point me to other books and articles; external links (section at the
> very bottom of every Wikipedia article) which actually take me to other
> websites that may be useful for my research. I get all of this from Wikipedia,
> and I think that's a great thing! Because I use and value Wikipedia
> personally, I feel that it's dishonest of me to denigrate it to students. We
> always talk about its weaknesses, however, and I feel that students leave our
> discussion with an understanding of how and why it's useful, but also why it's
> not an appropriate academic resource to cite (authority of authorship is
> importa!
>  nt when using info from a source-- I do hear my colleagues who argue that
> it's perhaps elitist to refuse to cite a "less worthy" source, but when you
> use a Wikipedia article as a jumping off point, without taking notes from it
> and populating your final project with facts from other, cited, sources, I
> feel like it's appropriate not to cite Wikipedia). Again, I feel that it's
> inauthentic to dismiss Wikipedia outright as a useless resource, when I know
> it's not useless! Kids are going to use it regardless of what we tell them
> (not necessarily for school projects, but certainly in their own lives), and I
> think that it sidelines us professionally, in the eyes of the kids, when they
> KNOW it's useful, but we are telling them that it's not. Jump on board, I say,
> and teach them to use it in the best way possible, while still protecting the
> academic rigor and expectations of good research!
>  
> Respectfully,
>  
> Alicia Duell
> Library Media Specialist
> Riverside Brookfield High School
> Riverside, IL 60546
> duella@rbhs208.org
>  
> 
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