A Stand Against Wikipedia
As Wikipedia has become more and more popular with students, some professors have become increasingly concerned about the online, reader-produced encyclopedia. While plenty of professors have complained about the lack of accuracy or completeness of entries, and some have discouraged or tried to bar students from using it.
“As educators, we are in the business of reducing the dissemination of misinformation,” said 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,” he said.
The department made what Wyatt termed a consensus decision on the issue after discussing problems professors were seeing as students cited incorrect information from Wikipedia in papers and on tests. In one instance, Wyatt said, a professor noticed several students offering the same incorrect information, from Wikipedia.
There was some discussion in the department of trying to ban students from using Wikipedia, but Wyatt said that didn’t seem appropriate. Many Wikipedia entries have good bibliographies, Wyatt said. And any absolute ban would just be ignored. “There’s the issue of freedom of access,” he said. “And I’m not in the business of promulgating unenforceable edicts.”
Wyatt said that the department did not specify punishments for citing Wikipedia, and that the primary purpose of the policy was to educate, not to be punitive. He said he doubted that a paper would be rejected for having a single Wikipedia footnote, but that students would be told that they shouldn’t do so, and that multiple violations would result in reduced grades or even a failure. “The important point that we ...
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...ple University, said of the Middlebury approach: “I applaud the effort for wanting to direct students to good quality resources,” but he said he would go about it in a different way.
“I understand what their concerns are. There’s no question that [on Wikipedia and similar sites] some things are great and some things are questionable. Some of the pages could be by eighth graders,” he said. “But to simply say ‘don’t use that one’ might take students in the wrong direction from the perspective of information literacy.”
Students face “an ocean of information” today, much of it of poor quality, so a better approach would be to teach students how to “triangulate” a source like Wikipedia, so they could use other sources to tell whether a given entry could be trusted. “I think our goal should be to equip students with the critical thinking skills to judge.”
— Scott Jaschik
Chris’ article is considered a normative argument due to the fact that it is primarily focused around political as well as ethical matters. Because his argument is considered normative, it must have a warrant. According to Richard A. Quantz, “a warrant is a rule or principle that connects the rest of the premises to the claim” (Quantz, 2012, p.4). The warrant present in this article is that teachers should teach students information that prepares them for the future. While the claim supports the political aspect of a normative argument, the warrant supports the ethical aspect of a normative argument. The claim can be seen as political because it addresses the struggle for power. Likewise, the warrant can be seen as ethical because it addresses what is morally right. To be fair to children, teachers need to provide them with knowledge that will allow them prosper. Although his argument is labeled as normative, Chris Hedges uses a couple of kinds of other premises in order to strengthen and better support his argument. He includes empirical, and conceptual premises.
For example, Wikipedia is normally surfing by users for any type of information but, information which is available on Wikipedia is not always accurate because any person can edit information on it and it doesn’t necessary that data is perfect.
In today’s society information is everywhere. We have libraries, but we also have online resources. Information can be obtained from almost everywhere today, but how accurate are these websites in giving us actual facts and not just beliefs or people’s opinions. One of the most popular resources that we use to gather information is the famous Wikipedia. Type anything in any web search engine and you will most likely get results from Wikipedia. But is Wikipedia accurate? If we look at the websites URL, we can see that it’s a nonprofit organization, and a vast majority of people contribute, so there is no author, email, or phone number, or any way to contact. To verify how accurate all the information is. Putting Wikipedia to the test
Since the internet has been available in schools and libraries in this country, there has been a debate about what should be accessible to users, especially minors. The amount of information disseminated on the world wide web is vast, with some sources valuable for scholarly and personal research and entertainment, and some sources that contain material that is objectionable to some (ie. pornography, gambling, hate groups sites, violent materials). Some information potentially accessible on the internet such as child pornography and obscenity is strictly illegal and is not protected under the First Amendment. Some information available on the internet that may be valuable to some is at the same time perceived to be worthless or potentially harmful to some. For libraries serving the public, there has been controversy on the issue of providing the internet, free of censorship or filtering, to users. While some librarians and their professional associations align with ideals of free and unfiltered access to all information provided by the internet, some feel that filtering internet content to exclude possibly objectionable materials is a reasonable measure to prevent potential harm to minors.
Steven Pinker states that “search engines lower our intelligence, encouraging us to skim on the surface of knowledge …” (1). Many students are not reading their assigned books anymore. Sparknotes and other web sites such as Shmoop have provided students with resources which are not useful. Students’ skim through these sites to read books. Most of the websites gives students’ plot summaries which are from another person’s take on that book .This damages the student 's’ chances of actually reading and understanding a book and having their own opinion .The
Have you ever been in desperate need of information on a particular subject? Or are you an introverted academic student who wants to be prepared for every lesson? Or do you just need information? Introducing the Enchanted Encyclopedia that is convenient for every situation you may encounter. The Enchanted Encyclopedia contains every document ever made, including information from both the wizarding world and muggle world. The book can sense emotions as well as read your mind. Also, the Enchanted Encyclopedia is customizable meaning you, the owner, can control the size, thickness etc. of the book. Which is why the Enchanted Encyclopedia is a formidable product, and may appeal to you Miss Hermione Granger from ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’.
In the first paragraph, Jaron appeals to the pathos of the reader; he assumes that the reader is of the generation that has grown up in the digital age, thus they would agree that the most important aspect of the internet is the people who contribute to it. However, there is no reason to ever assume that. Some people may actually believe that user contribution detracts from what makes the internet a viable source of information. For example, if the internet were controlled by academia, it would most likely be a peer reviewed source of information. However, as it is, anyone can contribute information to the internet, which makes the internet not a reliable source for knowledge. We can see this in academia, which typically does not support the use of Wikipedia as an academic source, and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that relies entirely on user contribution.
Wikipedia is one of the most influential sources of information in the world, and I am proud to have contributed and improved a page within the comfort of a class
Undoubtedly, the convenient accessing and easy searching of Wikipedia have changed the way people learn about an unfamiliar topic. Before people have Wikipedia in their daily life, they have to turn the encyclopedia page after page for seeking knowledge. However, now people can easily search for any information on Wikipedia. Even though it is not a reliable source for academic research, people still can gain some particularly useful materials from Wikipedia for general knowledge; therefore, it is quite efficient for general using. On the other hand, as for more serious activities or academic research, it is not rational to adopt Wikipedia because of the imprecise content, the risk of vandalism, and the reliability of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a frequent resource used by students who would much rather click on the first result given by a search engine such as google, than dwell on multiple books for hours. The main idea behind Wikipedia is to be a “free encyclopedia, written collaboratively by the people who use it”, where volunteers constantly create impressive articles in countless topics. Although this is an idea was have learned to rely on; the open-editing policy they assess, where writers regardless of their background or experience can write or edit any topic of their choice is problematic. On a scholarly paper, students should avoid Wikipedia as their only source of information. However, if used, it should be used and analyzed with caution.
Advocates of the Act need to realize that Internet linked computers can provide more current information than what is found in today's "exciting" textbooks. For example, science textbooks and history textbooks are notoriously out of date. In contrast, the Internet offers students a vast pool of current scientific data.
New books and research studies are posted on the Internet daily for the world to read. In the past, if you were from a poor school or a sheltered community that banded books from school libraries, you may not be able to read some important information. Making the student that had the opportunity to read and learn this new information better educated than a person who did not have the same books on their school library shelves. The author of the article The internet as a classroom explains this fact when she says, "We have arrived at a new moment in history: a moment in which such terms as class, race, gender, sexuality, nationality and ideology are no longer useful" (Hendricks). This statement applies to education because information can be found on any subject on the web.
With the advancement of technology and the exponential increase of Internet use, professionals-academic and business-are relying on electronic resources for information, research, and data. The Internet gives an individual access to a sea of information, data, and knowledge; plus, this vast amount of information is available in a matter of seconds, rather than hours or days. The ease of access, availability, up-to-the-second timeliness, and vastness of online resources is causing many professionals, however, to forgo the use of print sources. Online resources are useful to conduct scholarly research and 'may be convenient, but they have shortcomings that make print sources necessary for submitting high-quality assignments' (Dilevko & Gottieb, 2002, ¶ 1).
First off, wikis could provide many uses for the educational environment. Not only is it easy to access and doesn't require fancy hardware or programs, it also encourages participation to take place. Wiki pages can be edited by either students or professors with each page relating to a topic or subtopic to the class unit; these pages can either be a collaborative or individual effort depending on the professor's choice. Each page can consist of an image or video gallery to support the text or have links provided for students to learn more information. Also, there could be forums to discuss the information further with fellow peers. David L. Neumann conducted a research project to analyze the effects of using wikis against individual (traditional) lectures. At the end of the researc...
Internet needs to be in the classrooms of schools in the new millennium. If you can’t get on and surf the internet by yourself then you are looked down upon. The internet is the new big thing, it’s technology at it’s best. That’s why we must keep our students in schools educated and updated with it, the internet has endless possibilities. Students would never run out of information for their reports in school, they can either go to the library and look for the information they need and hope that the book they need is not checked out, which could take up to a couple of hours. While on the internet you can find the information in the matter of minutes. Many books are outdated and you would be lucky to check one out if everybody in the class is doing the same report! The internet keeps up with current information coming in every day of the week. I don’t think students abusing their time on the internet is a problem, I think we need teachers or someone to monitor where they are going on the internet. There are programs advisors can download that can block out any material not suitable for students at schools.