The best example of this collective information set up is Wikipedia. People can, at the touch of a button, add, modify, comment, flag, or read the information that is available. Personally to me, this forum is like the utopia of the internet. Everyone can have their say and provide the world with the fascinating knowledge that the specific individual has. People patrol each other by being able to comment and flag posts. Data is required to have source information or else it is labeled with a warning about the content. In the end there are organizers who keep up the site and edit the listings for grammar and writing style. So maybe it is not quite as simple as people all having an equal say. At the same time, though, I have not found a better resource that has the vast quantity of information available anywhere else.
This new wave of the internet which allows users to be produsers requires a new wave of education. People need to understand whether or not wikipedia, for example, is a credible source. Many times educators will ban students from using wikipedia, but in doing so they do not address the fact that their students will use it anyway. And now the students do not have directions about how to figure out whether or not the information is credible. In the new wave of education teachers will be users and produsers and learners. Teachers will become more moderators and less of lecturers. This transition is already taking place, but more work needs to be done in order to encourage educators to use, produse, and learn about the internet for the benefit of their students.
1 comment:
I think the biggest gripe professors have with Wikipedia is the fact that credible editors and writers are not visible to the reader. It's going back to what I wrote in my blog today, about the necessity for evaluation. Wikipedia is indeed a utopian forum for prodused information, but there is no clear-cut guide, no seal of approval akin to the functions of academic institutions. If Wikipedia can be trusted without a reputable and vastly approved "quality control panel" of sorts (we are always *assuming* there is one, but can never be sure -- that's the price of utopian anonymity), then the only reasons left for having accredited institutions will slip through the cracks. In other words, academia does not think Wikipedia isn't valuable; if anything, it's a threat!
Post a Comment