March 2009

Although Wikipedia is often considered a woefully inaccurate, no-good, downright evil source by many academics, there has actually been a great deal of interesting discussion on how Wikipedia (and other open content projects) can be incorporated into course writing assignments. For me, the bottom line is this: Yes, Wikipedia and other online sources have their limitations and problems. However, we all know that students rely heavily on such sources (heck, many educators rely heavily on such sources, too), so rather than simply ignoring them or forbidding their use in a course, educators should be teaching students to critically examine all sources of information and helping them to understand the variety of ways in which knowledge is constructed in the digital age. read more