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Dragon87 wrote:lamortefille wrote:
My son had to do a report with information found online and his teacher listed Wiki as a possible source. 🙄 We told him no way!
Did you know university professors do that too? Seriously when we were looking up stuff for an assignment in my spectroscopy class, the prof recommended Wiki. My reaction was basically along the lines of…. 😯 😯 😯
I thought we abandoned Wiki the minute we got accepted into university.
Depends on the prof, but I’d be surprised to hear it from their mouths. All my art history profs expressly forbid Wiki as a source for information on papers. We were not allowed to use it, period.
lamortefille wrote:but I’m talking about a 6th grader here. If he is told by his teacher to use Wiki as a source, he’s going to take everything on the site as fact.
But his teacher is supposed to be telling the students to NOT use Wikipedia as a citable source. Some schools block Wikipedia. I had thought that all schools disallowed citations from Wikipedia on papers.
Wikipedia, as an educational tool, is a starting point; not a destination. At the age of 12, a student should be in the process of learning critical judgment and not be relying on a single source of information. A Wikki article contains citations; the student follows those citations to check on the veracity of the information. Then cites the source, not Wikipedia.
Of course, I am of the opinion that the kids should be able to cite Wikipedia as their starting point, in the way that some of us quote our local newspaper for their rendering of an AP article, and…
lamortefille also wrote:Again I will say, you have your opinion and I have mine, so that’s that.
Oops. Sorry.
Rusti wrote:Dragon87 wrote:lamortefille wrote:My son had to do a report with information found online and his teacher listed Wiki as a possible source. 🙄 We told him no way!
Did you know university professors do that too? Seriously when we were looking up stuff for an assignment in my spectroscopy class, the prof recommended Wiki. My reaction was basically along the lines of…. 😯 😯 😯
I thought we abandoned Wiki the minute we got accepted into university.
Depends on the prof, but I’d be surprised to hear it from their mouths. All my art history profs expressly forbid Wiki as a source for information on papers. We were not allowed to use it, period.
This was a chem prof so I was really confused. But their really sciency stuff tends to be a little more accurate then some of their other stuff that people without degrees would know alot about. But there are still (bad!) errors. I think there was an entertaining thing on some sort of salt but I can’t remember which one (not table salt). They also had the wrong chemical makeup for something too but those things are obvious to people who have just taken boatloads of chemistry. 🙄
Dragon87 wrote:Rusti wrote:Dragon87 wrote:lamortefille wrote:My son had to do a report with information found online and his teacher listed Wiki as a possible source. 🙄 We told him no way!
Did you know university professors do that too? Seriously when we were looking up stuff for an assignment in my spectroscopy class, the prof recommended Wiki. My reaction was basically along the lines of…. 😯 😯 😯
I thought we abandoned Wiki the minute we got accepted into university.
Depends on the prof, but I’d be surprised to hear it from their mouths. All my art history profs expressly forbid Wiki as a source for information on papers. We were not allowed to use it, period.
This was a chem prof so I was really confused. But their really sciency stuff tends to be a little more accurate then some of their other stuff that people without degrees would know alot about. But there are still (bad!) errors. I think there was an entertaining thing on some sort of salt but I can’t remember which one (not table salt). They also had the wrong chemical makeup for something too but those things are obvious to people who have just taken boatloads of chemistry. 🙄
I have used Wiki as a jump off point to find peer reviewed sources, but I have never used the actual article for any information.
Seems odd that a Chem prof would recommend it. No matter what the experience level, you can still be misled.
If a prof at my university finds out you Wiki-ed as a source, you fail the assignment 😆 All departments here are super strict about having 100% accurate information and citations to back it up, from the languages to science to math. (I actually learned this rule in a math class my Freshman year.) It is allowed to get an idea from Wiki and then find out in a more reliable place if it’s true or not, though.
The Castle [Dave wrote:“]
lamortefille also wrote:Again I will say, you have your opinion and I have mine, so that’s that.
Oops. Sorry.
Nothing to be sorry about. I don’t mind a little friendly debate, as long as it’s not an endless friendly debate. 😆 I’m just agreeing to disagree.
Megani-chan wrote:If a prof at my university finds out you Wiki-ed as a source, you fail the assignment 😆 All departments here are super strict about having 100% accurate information and citations to back it up, from the languages to science to math. (I actually learned this rule in a math class my Freshman year.) It is allowed to get an idea from Wiki and then find out in a more reliable place if it’s true or not, though.
Which is what I usually do. When I don’t look up everything at the Uni where they have access to all the journal websites. I just get wiki as a starting block and then don’t even quote it. It just seems wrong to use wiki… 😆
I tell my students to not use Wikipedia in their papers, but to use it as a source for keywords for academia searches, or a jump-off point for other research.
It causes an in-class debate every time.
I occasionally post and edit articles on Wikipedia, let me know if you need any help with setting that page up or the formatting ^_^
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