LearnHub

mawstools said:

Do we need gatekeepers for the truth? And do those gatekeepers need to be experts? What IS an expert now?

IJsbrand van Veelen stirred a lot of controversy when he premiered his documentary last week, The Truth About Wikipedia.

The film lasts about 48 minutes and pits Andrew Keen (The Culture of the Amateur) against former editor-in-chief of the Britannica against Wikipedia co-founders Larry Sanger, Jimmy Wales, and Tim O’Reilly, among others.

There are a number of conversations going on here at the LearnHub that this seems pertinent to…

But then, who says I’m an expert?

I think this debate sheds an interesting light on conversations about Blearning, Where Do We Want to Lead LearnHub, Constructivism, Collaborative Learning, Education 2.0, and many more.

What do you think?

And, besides, this is my first video lesson… Thanks, Nellie!!

csrd said:

LearnHub is very alive and that it is closely obseving each slot of comment is obvious from Adam’s remarks on another page. The fecility of navigation LH has, helped me to take a quick look at what I mentioned or read elsewhere and assimilate the content and comments of a given lesson and relate it to another context if necessary.

This first video lesson of M makes me look back to visualise ‘what would have been the the quality and impact of my research had I made use of these tools’. I have heard and seen people talking about Wikipedia here in the presentation. It makes me feel responsible for how I am going to use it and use it to meet the requirements to effect my knowledge traffic online.

hcraig said:

Meri – thank you for finding this and posting it. I’m adding a link to the debate that has started in BLearning. Great choice for your first video lesson!

nelliemuller said in response to:

You did, Meri… Hurrahhhhh!!!! I am so happy. It’ an excellent video. I also added one of his videos on social presence to my ning sites.

lechuck said:

This is a great documentary. It pits free speech and information sharing against commercial information. Information sharing through the web has become such a paramount thing all over the world.

My experiences with Wikipedia has all been positive so far. If I am curious about something, I quickly search it out on Wiki and glance through the page. Think about it, how amazingly useful can this be for people without the money to buy encyclopedias. The internet and computers are becoming more and more world spread and readily available for everyone. Having a information resource such as Wiki—or LearnHub for that matter, is a world changing thing.

I don’t think the average person is going to have to worry about coming across false information. If incorrect info is written I am sure it’s quickly picked up by another “expect” and fixed.

Wiki is by no means a tool to expand your education on. It’s a great way to find that tid bit of information you and your friend were arguing about the day before. This is where LearnHub differs quite a bit. It’s much more information heavy and sets out to actually TEACH you and education you on a specific topic.

mawstools said:

The distinction between information and education is being hashed out online more and more. I’ve been online since 1986 and it’s about time this distinction is made. I couldn’t be more delighted. What Adam’s said above, that LH is aimed at providing a space to TEACH and LEARN about specific topics, is one of the things I’m finding most fascinating about participating here. This is NOT a wiki… it’s something else. But it works a lot like a wiki in some very important ways and allows for us all to add to each others’ offerings while not obliterating authorship. Interesting.

hcraig said in response to:

I agree with you on almost everything – except the average person coming across wrong information. You’d be amazed at the number of university students who think it’s appropriate to use wiki in a scholarly paper. And, people don’t tend to check and recheck Wikipedia to ensure the information they read last week is still the same as what they’re reading this week.

For general info though – completely agree. Wiki provides a great overview.

jza said:

I think that wikipedia is amazing, and this value of truth is really relevant. Basically we can especulate all day if its true or not. As an open source advocate I fight a very similar fight since all our software is done by arguably speaking ‘amateurs’ which can get in the source code and modify the code. But in the end things just work, this to a degree where the comunal knowledge far exceed the expectations of the so called ‘professional’ knowledge who is subject to other agenda like market deadlines or other surrounding noise.

As for the other side of the debate I most say that even some enviromentals could be hold true, the overal outcome is that we wouldn’t be able to process wide range of topic without this tool.

Is humanly imposible read on 10 different topics in 10 different minutes in the britanica as opposed to wikipedia. Just searching for this “books” is way slower than a search engine. And this “facts” holds themselves arguably true.

kimrothwell said:

I recently attended a conference session in which the validity of wikipedia as a source of information was discussed. The speaker made a great point that wikipedia is an example of a change in responsibility on the web. No longer are experts the only ones with the responsibility to monitor and correct information. Rather, EVERYONE is responsible for making sure information is correct. I’ve used this concept in course designs – setting up assignments so the students are responsible to each other for making sure the information they create is correct.

mawstools said:

Exactly, Kim! The collaborative learning model we’ve been trying to disseminate for the last twenty years is showing up in Wikipedia… at least that’s how I see it. Now the paradigm of “lifelong learning” has to take root, not just in our conversations, but in our working relationships. We owe it to each other to keep bringing all our experience back to the table and mashing it up with each other… Isn’t it fun?

kimrothwell said:

Oh, absolutely!

At the university level, we often find it harder to implement collaborative learning – things are extremely grade-focused and as students begin to see a university education as a commodity they pay for, it becomes harder to foster a sense of collaboration and engagement among peers who are likely competing for the same jobs or are bombarded with so much information that a strong focus on any one subject is hard to foster.

In addition, some faculty are extremely skeptical of Wikipedia (and understandably so!). It seems like the educational paradigm around what is considered valid knowledge may need to begin adjusting. Sometimes, the community can be just as accurate as the expert!

sustenergy said:

Excellent video. I probably agreed with half, disagreed with the other half, but all made a number of great points to help form an opinion on web 2.0 and what it all (could) mean.

secorbett said:

This is a fascinating documentary. Personally, I can see both sides of the debate. Like lechuck, my personal experience with Wikipedia has been positive. I think it is a great tool for someone like me for getting some background information about almost anything.

Like the African digital activist, I am excited by “the act of creating knowledge with other people” that Wikipedia offers to those who post on it. Like Meri and Kim, as an educator I see it as potentially a wonderful opportunity to promote cooperative learning.

My teenage daughter just graduated from a highly competitive middle school magnet program in which the teachers – for good reason – refused to allow students to cite Wikipedia for any research papers. I believe this is reasonable, since the information on Wikipedia is not 100% reliable.

I am concerned about the danger that too many college students, as well as some Wikipedia readers in developing countries with more limited access to other sources, (or anyone else who may not be a critical reader) may just assume that whatever they read on Wikipedia is the truth. It seems that the average person is more likely to believe as fact something he/she reads in print than the same information conveyed orally.

Furthermore, I realize that Wikipedia is updated frequently, but I wonder: What is the potential for a group of individuals with bad intentions to continually update sensitive subject areas of Wikipedia for malevolent purposes? For instance, after a deliberate Internet misinformation campaign, recent polls in the U.S. have found that ten percent of Americans still believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim. If you want to see a really disturbing example of lies masquerading as a “valuable resource for teachers and students alike”, just do a search of “Martin Luther King” and you’ll find the third website – I believe it’s MartinLutherKing.org. (This is a blatant example that an educator can use to teach students about the dangers of relying exclusively on the Internet for conducting research without considering the source of the information.)

Any Wikipedia experts out there – is my scenario far fetched?

chandra_avinash said:

Wiki is a wonderful resource and I have been using it for a long time now. Every time I use it, I tend to check sources, since pages with dubious or low/no sources are potential candidates for spreading nonsense and wrong information – which in many cases can have dire implications. I suggest you also adopt the same habit and decide for yourself whether you want to rely on the information or not. This way, you take up more responsibility and are not a tool in the hands of an “axis of evildoers”.

While no one is educated enough or sane enough to be an expert, the least we can do is to debate and highlight the points of contention so that users are aware of existing inconsistencies. This way, unsuspecting/innocent users will be able exercise a better decision. Wiki adopts the same policy (more or less), however, the trouble is the sheer size of the site, which makes it inconvenient to track changes, despite proper mitigation mechanisms being in place.