CHAPTER 4 ENTRY

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."
~Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder (Wales, 2004)
-----I just think this is a great quote!

"So when mistakes occur or vandals strike, the collaborative efforts of the group set it straight, usually very quickly. University of Buffalo Professor Alex Halavais tested this by creating thirteen errors on various posts on Wikipedia, all of which were fixed within a couple of hours (Halavais, 2004). Pretty amazing I'd say." (56)

I'd say so to. It is really incredible when you try to imagine how many people are online and all the links they will hit. To think that mistakes on random topics could be fixed within hours is unreal. I would have not even considered editing a Wiki before taking this class.

"edits appear at a rate of about 400,00 per day." (57) --again--just unreal.... I love the sentence that follows this one. "Every day, thousands of people who have no connection to one and other engage in the purposeful work of negotiating and creating truth." I mean that is what this is ALL about after all isn't it? Getting to the bottom of the truth, creating it, and having faith in the overall inherent goodness and intelligence of humans to be able to do this.

I will have to say, however, that after reading this chapter it is SO positive that it is obviously bias. The author is COMPLETELY for Wikis and I found this a bit annoying, even though I agree for the most part.

This is a good idea: "The early consensus among educators seems to be to tell students to use Wikipedia as a starting point for their work, but not as a sole resource." (60)

"Should we be encouraging them to contribute what they learn and know to the Wikipedia entry on the topic?" --YES!!!-- What a great way to show real world application!

Pgs. 66-67 give some great information on places to go to build a classroom Wiki site. I hope to use this information one day in my classroom. After I get a classroom that is. :)