Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts (ch 4) Reflection

I am a nontraditional student who already has a bachelor degree in clinical laboratory science and while getting that degree I was told never to use Wikipedia as a source.  My professors told me it was not a credible source because anyone could add false data or delete things that were very important.  Basically it was bad because anyone in the world could write what they wanted and you wouldn’t know what was true and what wasn’t.  After reading the chapter about wikis in Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts I came to realized that my professors were quite wrong and Wikipedia is actually a great source that is really easy to use.  The author of the book talks about how there are many more people who want to make Wikipedia accurate than there are people who want to vandalize it.  He talks about one teacher who purposely put false information into thirteen different entries and within hours all of them were fixed.  This leads me to believe that the information you find on Wikipedia is just as accurate, if not more accurate, than the information you would find on a more ‘credible’ website.  I think the thing that scares teachers the most is not knowing if the information that their students are finding is accurate or not.  Wikipedia or any other wiki that is used should be treated just like any other website you come across when trying to determine the accuracy of a source.  Compare the information to that which you find on another site and look to see how often and how many times it has been updated.  I think using wikis to find information on the web is a great idea, but I like the idea of building your own wiki in your classroom so students can display their work or have access to class information.  I think as a teacher I need to be open to the technology that is available to me.  I may not like it all or understand it, but I need to be willing to learn it and incorporate some of it into my future classroom.  The best way I can think of for using a wiki would be as a bulletin board where I can post worksheets or handouts that I have given in class.  I would also list due dates for assignments or projects the students are working on and it would be a place where parents can go to see what their children are doing in my class.  I would assign a different student every week to daily post what we did in class, kind of like we do in lab for Education 331.  I like the idea of having one place where students can go to find all the information they need about a particular project or assignment.  This way they don’t have to worry about losing handouts and missing part of an assignment.  It would also be a good way for students who are sick or missed class for some reason to catch up and even get their homework done before coming to class the next day.