Wikimania 2005

July 3, 2005 - 5:53 pm UTC

[Wikimania 2005 - The First International Wikimedia Conference](http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

The link says it all, go and read the page if you’re interested in the purpose of the conference. The conference will be held in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, yet will be held in English mostly. What an interesting place, and I’m curious to know why they’re holding it there. It’s actually going to be soon too: next month (August 4-8).

When I saw this on slashdot, it reminded me of several things. First, I can’t tell you how useful the Wikimedia [Wikipedia](http://www.wikipedia.org) site was to me during student teaching. I had a lot of researching to do because I was teaching several things that I didn’t know. I would start by going to the college libraries, finding as much information as I could at Wikipedia on whatever I was researching, and print it out for reference. I’d then go through, read and highlight, etc. I did this in addition to books, but since I wasn’t doing anything academic like a paper, I didn’t have to worry about a source.

As a teacher that’s the one thing that I’m unsure of regarding Wikipedia. It’s an absolutely wonderful source, and for the most part I’ve seen it to be very accurate. The sheer volume of participants and visitors allows them to keep all articles editable by anyone; I don’t think it would work otherwise.

The problem lies in trying to classify it as a source when doing academic research. Since I will be giving out research papers, or even requiring students to research, I know that they will want to use Wikipedia. I wouldn’t even dream of refusing to allow them considering the wonderful source that it is. It’s just hard to reconcile what it is in my mind with my academic training. I was taught throughout college to use reputable sources that you are able to cite. With history it’s very easy to find sources that are not so…credible shall we say (specifically on the internet!!) While Wikipedia is a great resource, I can’t reconcile myself to the fact that there is no *author* to attribute the works being cited, therefore one cannot know the credibility.

As a high school teacher this won’t be a huge problem, but I’ll be training most of my students to go to college when they leave school. I highly doubt that college history professors (or many others in fact) will accept Wikipedia as a source. Those that do will likely be the few younger ones familiar with such things, and have a more liberal allowance with regards to sources.

Another problem with allowing my future students to use Wikipedia is that *it’s so easy*. Not that I want them to suffer and always have hard work, but I don’t forsee many of them finding other sources to do their research. I already saw this in my student teaching when my students did their few big projects. Students are lazy (I was!). I think most people will do things the easy way if they can. If students don’t look to other sources, they won’t learn how to use those sources.

Books are a great exapmle. In my student teaching experience, students almost fear books. When going to the library to research, they do their best to avoid books at all costs. There are a few very conscientious students who go to the books first instead of fighting for a computer, but those are few. If students don’t learn to use books as a source, they’ll be sorely lacking in knowledge about *research* when they go to college. There are so many other ways out there to get your information!

I know as a high school student myself I always used the internet when allowed. I hated when teachers said that we were required to get at least such and such amount of *book* resources as well. I think the problem was that I didn’t know how to do my research in books, and it was so much easier on the internet. The information on the internet is *expansive* but limited in its quality with regards to academic pursuits most of the time.

Categorized: Education, General, Techy