Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Wikis and Colledge-/level Composition
The article that we read written by Warschauer and Grimes about Web 2.0 applications is very informative for it briefly describes the main characteristics of the most common Web 2.0 applications. Particularly what I found interesting is the comparison of Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica. And I have a simple question about it. Since the former is not worse (well, there is a very small difference) than the latter, then why don't college professors allow their students cite the Wikipedia? No one would think of dismissing Britannica as a source of citation, and it seems that a team of professionals 'keeps an eye' on the texts posted there. And when I say 'students', I mean students in lower-level classes (the first and second year students).
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I thought that part of the article was really interesting, too! I've always told my students not to cite wikipedia, mostly because I wasn't confident that it would be accurate, and also because it seems to be stigmatized in academia, so it doesn't seem wise to let students get in the habit of citing it. But, I really thought that the authors gave the best reason for not citing wikipedia when they quoted its creator, who said that students shouldn't really be citing any encyclopedia in their college-level research (they should use primary sources instead). That explanation made much more sense to me!
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