At the start of my freshman year of high school, I was in the computer lab typing a paper and a classmate piped at me, "Hey, new kid. Pss... Where are you from?" I told them Spokane, Washington. Of course the Texan teen did not know how to Spokane, let alone pronounce it correctly. So what did the arrogant freshman do, he googled the city. He came across a Wikipedia page full of grammatical errors and falsities about the place I called home. Since then, my distrust of Wikipedia had been only deepening. Until class with Jeff Utecht.
Since when did Wikipedia have a rubric ranking the completeness and accuracy of each page? Since when did Wikipedia allow everyone to edit to having a selected collection of people manage pages to permit and deny edits? Since when did Wikipedia become more reliable than a textbook? I don't know, Wikipedia. I think I had some biases, but we should give this another try.
As for Google, I am still a default "g" fan. However, Google had some secrets hidden from me. Google can be sited to search by state, country and dates. Google has archived newspapers, true paper newspapers digitally uploaded, from times before the internet. Google can also graph out the popularity and number of uses of a word by date to show the rise and fall of vocabulary.
Wikipedia and Google, you both are starting to convert me into a teacher who wants to use technology in the classroom. I am not sure if I should be saying "thank you" quite yet. But let us get to know each other better and see where all this research can go.
I was in your same boat as far as my thinking that Wikipedia didn't have reliable information. I believed that anyone could edit anything and that it would go unchecked. I think this idea and many like it will be difficult for us and something to keep in mind. We are coming in with bias to a multitude of things so we need to recognize it and re-evaluate it. I have faith we will be able to do that! We got this!
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