A Word To The Teachers
Entry posted by Vezok's Friend
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First of all: This is not a rant. This is an observation and a call for staying open-minded.
Everyone of us who went to highschool and college or whatever other educational instituation simply had to give a talk or a presentation or write a paper or report or something else on a specific topic. There is no way around it and it is an important part of education since talking to people or communicating with them is the way to convince them of yourself so that they will listen to you or will be willing to give you money for something you sell. It's just the way it works.
Now I called this entry "a word to the teachers". Because we who have written reports etc. face the same problem again and again: We are expected to research a topic that has been researched by other peoplebefore us with information we collected from sources presented to us by other people in an original or simply well-done way. And ever since a certain encyclopedia went online in the WWW, us students are warned and accused with the same thing:
That using google and wikipedia is an amateurs way of researching information. That these sources are unreliable. That it's basically cheating. And may the flying spaghetti monster save us if we even cite Wikipedia as a source of our information.
Now, I understand why profs don't like Wiki, or internet researched information in general: Nobody knows the quality of the source. It could be a 12 year old with an IQ of 200 posting incorrect information in a sophisticated way on the web. It could be one of them world-conspiracy theorists. It could be Elmar Fudd.
Who knows. And yes, there are many goofballs on the internet. Even I am a goofball, which anybody can confirm who has recived one of my less serious comments on their profile before.
And there are several specimens of students who, in all honesty, are lazy, not creative and plain dumb. I don't know any personally, I am not judging any students I know, but I have seen papers that were made with the magic that is Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V. Including hyperlinks and Url. And certainly is dumb.
But it is not my intention to defend these guys. What I want to make clear, and though it is just my opinion:
Wikipedia can be a very good source of information. Just because it is handy it doesn't mean the quality is bad.
Why? Because by now they have quality checks on there.
And who do you seriously think writes all these articles? It's certainly not some teenage prankster with fake dates for facts.
I am pretty sure the writers of the wikipedia articles that are really important are people who know their stuff.
Large Hadron Collider? Cancer? New form of the Malaria? Quantum physics.
Now, I don't know how that sounds to you, but writing about that needs knowledge.
Doctors, or other teachers themselves. Or a student editing in stuff from a book by a professor elaborating on a topic.
Besides, the sources of the information in Wiki are listed.
Adding on to that: Why do you think for presentation the teachers put us together in teams or small groups many times? Because working as a team can bring better results. And with so many people editing wikipedia I am pretty sure the essence of what is written there is mostly true.
To sum it all up: I just want to make clear that schoolwork using wikipedia and similar sources is not worth less then schoolwork that used books and a library as resources for its claims.
Of course using only wiki for your paper might not be the best thing, using a great source like that together with others is totally acceptable.
So teachers, please cut the students some slack when it comes to internet-based research.
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