Education Rambler

For many people Wikipedia is old news, but as part of my job, I feel obligated to make sure teachers know that it exists.  And, for people who know how Wikipedia works, there is always a tendency for people to dismiss Wikipedia as irrelevant because it’s perceived an inaccurate and subject to change.  Rather than debate the pros and cons of Wikipedia, I’d just like to list some of my favorite uses for it.

SCHEMA BUILDING
When I’m learning something new or I want to quickly understand something, one of the first places I go is Wikipedia.  For instance, just the other day I was back home in Pennsylvania and someone made some statements about “all the Amish and Mennonites down there.”  Realizing that I didn’t really know the difference between Amish people and Mennonites, I went to Wikipedia and typed in Amish.  The results took whatever background knowledge I had previously and coupled it with a better understanding of Amish and Mennonite traditions.

For about nine years, I taught an undergraduate American Sign Language course at a local university.  A huge component of learning any language is learning about both the langauge and the culture.  To assist my students in building schema around Deaf Culture, I gave them key terms and asked them to search Wikipedia and the Internet for information prior to the next class.  This allowed for students to come in the next week with a little bit of schema and a lot of questions which lead to a great conversation to synthesize their understandings.

MAKING CONNECTIONS / SYNTHESIS
If you’ve heard of the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon then you are on your way to understanding what I’m about to say.  In this conversational game, participants are asked to think of a movie and list one of the actors.  From this, they think of an actor who might have been in a movie with Kevin Bacon.  Although they’re not always able to make the connection, it usually only takes a chain of six actors before you eventually get to Kevin Bacon.

What I love while playing around in Wikipedia and other wikis is something I call “wiki hopping.”  It’s kind of like surfing a wiki.  When I look something up in Wikipedia I usually read the main article, but then go back to some of the blue links in the article to see what else I can learn about related subjects.   It also helps to clarify things that I didn’t quite have a full understanding of.

Let’s go back to my Amish example.  While reading the article about the Amish, one of the blue terms was Pennsylvania Dutch.  Where I’m from, Amish and Mennonites are sometimes referred to as “Pennsylvania Dutch.”  What became clear to me is that Pennsylvania Dutch refers to a dialect, not necessarily another group who might be mistaken for Amish.  In further reading about Pennsylvania Dutch, there was a cross link to the Industrial Revolution, and I’m sure I could have gone deeper and deeper from there.

My point is that in some way virtually everything is related–sometimes it’s just by six degrees.

SHARPENING THE SAW
Steven Covey (7 Habits of Highly Effecitve People) talks about the principle of sharpening the saw.  He uses this as a metaphor for becoming better at what you do by keeping your skills sharp.  My background is in deaf education, and with my current job I’ve become somewhat removed from it.  I enjoy going into Wikipedia and finding out the latest trends in Deaf Education and Deaf Culture.  I also like reading posts and finding places where my own contribution might clarify or add to a point that may not be presented in the most efficient way.

FOR SCHOOL?
I think all of the above uses of Wikipedia are totally appropriate for school, and I encourage teachers (and my college students) to use Wikipedia as much as they like.  My only rule for Wikipedia is that I will not accept it as a cited work in a paper or homework assignment.  I tell students to use it to get to the bare bones of what they’re about to study deeply, but they should use the understandings they gain from Wikipedia to sharpen their searches when looking for appropriate professional articles or publications.

This entry was posted on August 9, 2007 at 11:53 am and is filed under Learning, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.