wikease

My junior year of college, I found quite an amusing letter in the school newspaper -

( from http://media.www.signal-online.net/media/storage/paper771/news/2006/03/29/Editorial/Letters-1762285.shtml Issue date: 3/29/06 Section: Editorial )

Don't believe Wikipedia's lies

I was very impressed with Shaina Basile's Opinion article in the last issue of The Signal, in which she called Cindy Sheehan "despicable" and "an insult to (her) son's memory."

I was particularly intrigued with the fact that Basile credits all of the facts in the article as having been retrieved at wikipedia.org, an open-source encyclopedia which anyone can edit.

However, I came across something most perplexing while exploring this bastion of factual information known as Wikipedia.

Upon visiting the site, you'd be astonished to realize that according to one of the site's anonymous authors, Shaina Basile herself is "an influential member of the liberal anti-war feminist grassroots movement Code Pink" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaina_Basile).

She also has a "deep admiration" for Cindy Sheehan, whom she frequently works beside at grassroots anti-war events.

I found this astonishing, considering Basile just recently penned an article attacking Sheehan. Perhaps an open-source encyclopedia that any pre-teen with Internet access can edit is not the most reliable source of information for articles that are to be published in newspapers.

Chris Zimbaldi

The article that Chris linked to has since been deleted. While that is a pretty shady(and hilarious) way of getting a point across - one can guess Shana approaches information found onwikipedia in a much different manner.

We all know that wikipedia gives us some quick answers, that it is sprinkled with good facts (and tampered ones), that it is NOT an option for a source on anything but a question that popped into our heads (or to familiarize ourselves on something)...but not everyone else does...not even college students!

I never forgot this, because I thought it was hilarious (and I ended up meeting Chris the next year). What a great example of the need for CRITICAL LITERACY! For the need of research skills! For school and public librarianship that steps up when technology like wikipedia steps in.

skip

skippin' this week.

lessonplan

I have absolutely no idea what I want to focus on for the lesson plan project. No idea! That's why I waited so long to blog, I was hoping something would hit me before now. But nope. All I can do is list my requirement for the lesson plan:
-appropriate for Teens at a public library (more specifically my teens)
-not boring

I think something using digital cameras might be attractive...that's something my teens can easily share with friends through facebook or text messages. Seriously though, just not sure exactly what can come out of that.

I'm gonna look around your blogs for some inspiration - you guys usually don't dissapoint!