I thought since I grew up with technology and knew how to work my phone, the class would not be anything too surprising...I was wrong! After one morning in this class I felt like my entire life had been a lie. From collaborative note taking on google docs to the idea that Wikipedia is a trusted and reliable source, I was drowning in new information. Once I learned to swim though my eyes started to open to the incredible gifts I had been presented with in the first three hours of the day.
When I was in school I clearly remember learning about how untrustworthy Wikipedia was. It was a written rule the first time we researched that one could gather information from literally anywhere besides Wikipedia. I could talk to Jim down the street about baseball and site him because apparently he was more of an expert than Wikipedia. After learning about how resourceful Wikipedia was it took a while for me not to be angry at my entire career as a student.
I still had doubts, but then came the rubric. The same looking rubric a teacher used to give me a zero for using Wikipedia was the same thing Wikipedia used to give grades to their sites. Understanding the process of how these Wiki pages are graded just gave me more fuel for the protest I was about to have supporting Wikipedia downtown Spokane once class got out. Wikipedia is a research team of people that are not paid and come together to create the most insightful resource on the internet about many topics. It was cool to play around with the sites and see where they are getting their sources and how knowledge continues to be constructed.
At the end of the day I found myself comparing Wikipedia to Batman. Wikipedia has been beaten up and scrutinized by every teacher for years, but Wikipedia keeps on producing quality work none the less. We really don't deserve Wikipedia, but oh man will I be using it now that I know it is there.
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