What+are+cautions?

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 * S****cott**

Many people have concerns about wiki's and, in particular, Wikipedia because of the concerns of the veracity of information contained by the wiki. These concerns are not without merit as some recent high profile "wiki scandals" have come to light.

But issue should not be seen as the downside of of wiki's. Rather, it presents a necessary challenge to the conventional legimitization of knowledge. When this challenge is understood, the indeterminacy of veracity and legitimacy an embodiment of the strength of a wiki, not an indication of a fundamental weakness.


 * It represents a bit of a paradigm shift**. By shifting the role of author to the user (aka student), it also shifts the problem and, hence, the responsibility of veracity to the user. Legitimacy of knowledge should not a attribute conveyed by a publisher or enshrined single author, but a process of social negotiation and confirmation.

But part of dealing with a complex information world that our students live in more than we do, that when production and distribution is decentralized, cues for legitimacy change, and to a great degree, there is more onus on the consumer of knowledge and information to make critical decisions of the legitimacy of knowledge. This means that students have to learn to make more critical judgments about information, and more be more authoritative themselves in the own productions. The need to learn more about source and citation. More about how to collect and synthesize and express in a responsible way.


 * So what does this mean for the classroom?**

The notions of authorship and legitimacy may seem beyond the realm of mose people, but should they be? Really the notions can be whittled to a single idea in the classroom: **Wikipedia should be a real world instrument we can use with students to investigate the issue of authorship, veracity, legimitacy in the use of information.** Even at a basic level, students should be able to recognize that when information is "democratized", they have a responsibility to be critical of information. It emphasizes the importance of looking beyond the first source, to record sources, to cite in a conventional manner. References stop being a seemingly arbitrary requirement of the teacher to make sure students haven't "poorly researched" and it becomes real world imperative and responsibility for being a creator of knowledge themselves, and a contributing participant in culture of knowledge.

**Sharon**

I agree with Scott, but there is more to the issue than just wikipedia and veracity of information. The paradigm shift to which he refers has to do with **a shift of control of power**. School administrators are and should be concerned that social networking sites cannot be manipulated or managed. **Control of information has shifted to users**. Anyone can create content (be it digital text, audio or video) and upload it to a worldwide public. Most people behave themselves very well, but we MUST be aware that ANYTHING digital can be downloaded, manipulated, copied, edited, and shared with anyone. And what we might post on a blog or upload to a social networking site (i.e. images, graphics, video) may catch up with us years later to affect a decision by a potential employer or institution.

The answer to this problem of uncontrollable information uploads is not to filter everything on campus. Students will simply go home and access or upload objectionable content. **The answer is to educate our students to use digital media responsibly through modeling and practice.** One of the reasons I so strongly believe in global collaborative projects for ALL students is so that they can be given an opportunity to develop cross-cultural communication skills.

The other issue is of loss of individual voice because of too much information and content OR the danger that information and knowledge that is trivial and shallow will overtake that which is important.


 * For the dark side of blogging, watch this Orwellian movie - //Epic 2015//**

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