Thing 18

Wikis
The activity was very interesting for me. I worked a few hours a week with an 8th grade student last school with technology. And Wikipedia was a big battle. His teachers wanted him to use the library data bases for research but he, of course, wanted to use Wikipedia. In his defense, he uses the JAWS screen reader and it was easier for him to to directly to an article Wikipedia than wade through the schoolweb site to find what he needed. And I would find myself going to Wikipedia if we needed to find some bit of information quickly. I did try to explain to him that since anyone cancontribute to Wikipedia, the information may not be valid or as complete as other reference sources. I do not remember the discussion boards or history page. The article on time travel stated that this was a controversial topic that may be under dispute and that substantial changes should be posted on the discussion page with citations. It didn't occur to me that time travel would be be in that category. I looked up Margaret Sanger, who I expected to be controversial. The article itself said that it might contain misinterpreted or inappropriate citations which might not verify the text This was very interesting. It was intersting to see what was written in the discussions for the articles. It shows that the people contributing may have some very strange ideas. The article on braille, which isn't a very controversial topic, had some discussions on whether or not occult symbols were languages. Since braille is an alphabet, not a language that makes the discussion even more weird. I will have to work on creating a wiki tomorrow, Torchwood calls!
S