Jimmy Wales Says Students 'Should Use' Wikipedia

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC has up an article chatting with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Wales views the Wikipedia site as an educational resource, and apparently thinks teachers who downplay the site are 'bad educators'. '[A] perceived lack of authority ... has drawn criticism from other information sources. Ian Allgar of Encyclopedia Britannica maintains that, with 239 years of history and rigorous fact-checking procedures, Britannica should remain a leader in authoritative, politically-neutral information. Mr Allgar pointed out the trustworthy nature of paid-for, thoroughly-reviewed content, and noted that Wikipedia is still prone to vandalism.'"

If I let you in you'll sell me encyclopedias

[Dachannien]

I find this sketch [orangecow.org] particularly apropos somehow. (Or this [youtube.com] while it lasts.)

Re:They are bad teachers

[nmb3000]

I fixed your edit to this discussion.

Revision as of Fri Dec 07, '07 11:52 PM:

Every fact on Wikipedia has a link back to the primary source. All you have to do is tell kids to look up the fact from the primary source and cite that, and obviously not to cite it if there is no link back or they can't find the material. Any teacher who is too intellectually lazy to take the time to understand this is by definition a bad teacher. You aren't allowed to cite Britannica in any real class either, you have to follow the exact same procedure, so there is no difference. I don't even see how someone could defend a teacher who would lie to kids about the purpose of an encyclopedia.

Revision as of Sat Dec 08, '07 01:23 AM:

Every fact on Wikipedia has a link back to the primary source {citation needed}. All you have to do is tell kids to look up the fact from the primary source and cite that {citation needed}, and obviously not to cite it if there is no link back or they can't find the material {citation needed}. Any teacher who is too intellectually lazy to take the time to understand this is by definition a bad teacher {citation needed}. You aren't allowed to cite Britannica in any real class either {citation needed}, you have to follow the exact same procedure {citation needed}, so there is no difference {citation needed}. I don't even see how someone could defend a teacher who would lie to kids about the purpose of an encyclopedia {citation needed}.

In other news...

[VGPowerlord]

In other news, Steve Ballmer thinks Students 'Should Use' Windows [slashdot.org].

Next interview

[commodoresloat]

They ask Bill Joy and Richard Stallman which text editor is better, emacs or vi.

Re:Not a spec of Bias.

[Rob Simpson]

Exactly. Heck, for most university courses, citing books was frowned upon - too general and likely to be years out of date. Wikipedia might be a good starting point, but using encyclopedias as a reference past elementary school is a joke.