Building Understanding

Great post on wikipedia from Jeff at Thinking Stick after his presentation on wikis at the ETC conference in Bangkok.

We need to quit looking at Wikipedia as the end result and instead look at it as part of the learning process. Why not go to Wikipedia and use it as a learning device. Use it in our classrooms as part of the learning experience.

I posted on this topic a little while ago as well. In addition to Wikipedia being an incredibly accurate source on the large scale, it is a terrific conversation starter with students about source accuracy, a participatory web, and about collaboration. These are 21st century learning skills that we acknowledge, yet we avoid these conversations every time we block a site (like wikipedia) or deny it’s use by students.

Teachers need to let go of their allegiance to out-dated definitions of “legitimate information” and understand the power of the participatory web (I am trying to avoid web 2.0-jargon). So how do I convince them to do this?

More on Day 2 of Earcos to come…I’ve been doing a lot of “Jukes-ing”.