Wikipedia & the classroom

The on-going debate about the use of Wikipedia in the classroom via http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/brian/archives/045541.php. It is very interesting. We are changing how we talk about wikipedia with the students here. We know it is out there and we know students use it. It is much better to understand how it works than to dismiss it all together.

clipped from en.wikipedia.org User:Jbmurray/Madness Was introducing Wikipedia to the classroom an act of madness leading only to mayhem if not murder? Reflections on the use of Wikipedia in the University of British Columbia's course SPAN312, "Murder, Madness, and Mayhem: Latin American Literature in Translation," Spring 2008. [edit] Wikipedia: unloved but ubiquitous in academia Still, everybody uses it, in one way or another, even if they might want not to admit to the fact. Above all, our students use it, openly or otherwise (as they are often explicitly told not to cite wikipedia article in term papers), but without necessarily knowing how it works. They are told that wikipedia is bad, but they are not often told why; and of course, they find it an incredibly useful resource.