Weekly Report & Reflection Post #8

Welcome back!

I cannot believe that it is already March; next month is exams! This term is really flying by! This week we learned about wikis. A wiki is an Internet database that gives you the option to view, edit, share and delete information. The most well known Wiki is Wikipedia. I have talked about Wikipedia on my blog as a source that is not reliable, but this doesn’t mean that it is not useful. It can be a great tool for jumpstarting ideas for papers, or it can even just be fun to read up on subjects that interest you.

Retrieved from: Wikipedia.org

In this class we have already been shown how wikis can be a useful tool as we have used them before. We have a wiki tab on Sakai where we have multiple wikis to post our twitter handles, our blog URLs, and other things. An interesting thought I had is that a Google Doc could also be considered a Wiki as it allows people to view and edit the information. This means that a Wiki can be used to collaborate on a project with a group.

Previously I discussed one of the huge issues with Wikipedia: reliability. Because anyone can alter a Wiki an uneducated individual can change or add any information on Wikipedia, making it inaccurate. As mentioned in my fourth Weekly Report and Reflection Post I have found a way around this problem by browsing the reference section of the Wikipedia page for more reputable sources.

McCann, E. (CC) 2016.

This week we also learned about digital rights and responsibilities. We were to choose that we believe are most important. I picked the right to be heard, giving credit where credit is due, and being kind to each other. We also used Popplet, which I have previously used, to illustrate our choices. I believe that Wikis can be a good place to be heard, and when used correctly, use property citations to give credit where credit is due.

Article of the Week 

While cruising through my Feedly, I found a funnier article this week that I thought was appropriate for this week. The article is titles The Funniest Acts of Wikipedia Vandalism Ever from Huffington Post. Although it is a very funny article, it also makes you think about how easy it is for someone to change information on Wikipedia to make it inaccurate and people, especially students, should be very wary about using this information. 

Until Next Week!