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Digital

[Book Review] Wikipedia U: Knowledge, Authority and Liberal Education in the Digital Age, by Thomas Leitch

27709_book-review-wikipedia-u-by-thomas-leitchThis looks worth a read … had many discussions about the use of Wikipedia within academic life … and let’s face it, many of us use it as a first stop… but as I say to students,  it shouldn’t be the last stop:

In this deceptively slender volume, Leitch gathers a fascinating set of narratives around the nature of authority in the academic world, based strongly on the liberal education approach of critical analysis and debate. He looks perceptively at the New Model Army of innovative information folk represented by the Wikipedia philosophy of freedom, and discusses the issues raised in terms of a battle between the visibly entrenched opposing forces of “top-down” authority and the “bottom-up” building of consensus. It is a new world full of paradox, of unresolved questions and of the metaphoric scraping of metal on metal as the traditional architectures of academia struggle to avoid a slow-motion car wreck between the two cultures.

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Reviewer

[BOOK REVIEW] Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness

Now, here’s an interesting looking boo26976_book-review-wikipedia-and-the-politics-of-openness-by-nathaniel-tkaczk, and this first couple of paragraphs sums up a lot:

The relationship between academics and Wikipedia is a complex one. At one level we love it: however much some of us may deny it, we all use it, at the very least as a route to other information, and often as a way to start to get an idea about something new. At another level we hate it, knowing how unreliable it is and knowing how much students are likely to rely on it.

So what do we do? For many academics it becomes a pragmatic exercise. We accept Wikipedia, we use Wikipedia – and we tell our students to use it with a great deal of care, particularly in terms of reliability of information. “Never cite Wikipedia” is pretty much a mantra. And yet although we thoroughly question the reliability of the information, do we question the Wikipedia project itself? Do we ask what lies behind Wikipedia – or what the project itself really means? It often seems as though Wikipedia is part of the furniture or even part of the environment: taken for granted, on its own terms. Its collaborative “openness” is seen as admirable, its neutrality accepted and respected – without either that openness or that neutrality really being critically examined or questioned.

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Digital

Wikipedia of Value in Teaching?

Wikipedia LogoInteresting insights into how Wikipedia can be used for teaching:

The opportunities and challenges of integrating Wikipedia into higher education formed a central strand of the tenth annual Wikimania conference, which heard how academics and students are using and improving the collaboratively edited online resource.

The conference, held at London’s Barbican Centre last week and kicked off by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, heard from Shani Evenstein, who works at the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. She described Wiki-Med as “the first full academic Wikipedia course in Israel”, and probably the world.

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Digital

Peer-Reviewed Wikipedia?

Wikipedia-logo-en-big

So, can lecturers now stop saying “don’t use Wikipedia” … my motto has always been – fine to start there, really don’t want you to end there, but am even I going to have to rethink?

“Social and technological advances have brought about significant changes in methods of publication, particularly via a shift to electronic or online media,” she writes. “The openaccess publishing model is predicated upon that shift.

“In the past decade there has been a proliferation of free online information beyond the academic journal,” she continues, highlighting the user-generated Wikipedia, the world’s largest online encyclopedia, as one of the most prominent examples.

“Of its more than 4 million articles in English, over 3,800 are featured, meaning they have undergone a peer-review process and are considered well-written, comprehensive, well-sourced, neutral, and stable.”

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Digital

Universities Seeking to Tweak Wikipedia

wikipedia_logo_detailThe power of Wikipedia … often the first source that comes up in search … causing university PR departments to seek to tweak their pieces:

University press officers have been deleting negative information and finessing critical passages on their institutions’ Wikipedia pages, breaking the online encyclopedia’s guidelines in the process.

The revelations fuel debate over how far universities should go in burnishing their image in an era of higher tuition fees and greater competition for students.

In August, London Metropolitan University’s press office attempted to delete a section about comments made last year by vice-chancellor Malcolm Gillies, who said he was considering an alcohol ban on parts of the campus because conservative Muslim students considered the substance “immoral”.

Using an account called LondonMetropolitanUniversityPR, the press office also tried to remove a section on London Met’s apology to China for giving the Dalai Lama an honorary doctorate in 2008.

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