Blogs, Wikis Chapter 4 Reflection

I think one of my views that has changed after reading this chapter was my view on how reliable the information that is found within a wiki can be. Previously I had always been told, never to use sites like Wikipedia as a source or to allow students to use at a source, but that thought has been challenged. I can see how with everyone editing, most with the intent of providing good, reliable information can be a trusted source. At the same time at any one moment the information may be wrong and has yet to be fixed, so I think that I would have to encourage my own students in the future to double check their sources or at least cross reference things that they are not sure of. Another new view I took from this chapter is some of the ways that wikis could be used. The idea of the virtual textbook put together by the class as the semester progressed I think was a novel I idea. I can see how that would be a very good way for students to practice collaborating with each other and would likely be good practice for the future. I had used a system like that for collaboration when I worked at a job that we wrote reports. We used the editor function in Microsoft Word. Three or four of us would be working on a file saved on our center database and would edit a report each of us making changes to the final report. At times we would simply edit the report or we would use the track changes tool to accept or reject changes. In a way this was similar to a wiki on a much smaller scale.

In my future teaching I would like to try to use wikis if possible in the classroom. I still may not accept Wikipedia as a source from some assignments, but for other I can see the value in a having quick access to precompiled data. Hopefully the school I work at will have sufficient computers or my students will have sufficient computers to allow me to use wikis. The virtual textbook idea is something I could sink my teeth into. It would be nice to have students using a variety of sources for their studies versus one textbook. Also I think it would be a great way to introduce students to the idea of peer review and critical thinking. These are important in science and I think to effectively prepare students they are important to be able to do.