We are almost done grading the
Multi-genre projects. Overall they are quite good. Kids did a good job locating
primary and secondary sources although there were a few re-occurring issues. First, they
were asked to summarize the sources and then respond to a few suggested
questions such as: Did the source help answer your research question? Was it a
reliable source? What new questions were raised? Lots of students did okay
summarizing but fell short on the response part. I think the problem may be
that they are so used to doing “reports” in junior high where they simply
regurgitated information that they missed the evaluative stuff we were
seeking.The MLA citations looked mostly good. Overall I think this was a good
project to precede NHD. Lots of kids are well on their way.
Now about Wikipedia. I will come
clean and tell you that I love Wikipedia. I am on it constantly as are even the
people I know who claim to hate it. The difference of course is that unlike
most students, I know it’s limitations. Kids are going to go there first so we
may as well deal with it; the problem is that many won’t go beyond it.
Here are some things I find myself
saying over and again about Wikipedia.
1. Anyone can put anything on the
internet (although Wikipedia is policed more stringently than in the past).
2. In most cases we do not know who
wrote the articles on Wikipedia.
3. Look at the References and
External Links section at the end of the article.
4. If an article is flagged as
controversial read the discussions. This can be a fascinating exercise in
historical interpretation.
5. Use the Wiki article to generate
a list of search terms related to your project.
6. There are a lot of great images
on Wikipedia. Most have information related to the original source of the image
which should be used in the citation.
7. Never cite Wikipedia in your
bibliography.
This short video reinforces my
perspective on Wikipedia.
Next Post: Group versus Individual Projects.
1 comments:
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