One teacher sees Wikipedia as a new place for students to make their ideas known by Corina Ciubotaru

Those of us who are still in college or have recently ended it know how painful and boring it is to do a paper at the end of each semester, turn it in at the last minute and see nobody actually cares about it. Luckily, there are professors like Martha Groom, from the University of Washington-Bothell, who has assigned kids in two classes to post articles on Wikipedia as their project for their environmental and ecology class. They found information regarding globalization and the environment and posted them on the Web, learning first-hand what it feels like to write an objective piece of material and have rights over it. Some of their work was deleted by Wikipedia editors, but most students believed this experience was new, interesting and helpful. It kept them motivated and this is very rare among students nowadays, and it represents a different view from that of most teachers, who disagree with the use of Wikipedia as a source for information used in school papers. The information is believed to be inaccurate and scarce in some areas, so using it as research material probably isn't the best idea, but encouraging students to write valuable material there is probably going to make the online encyclopedia more useful and meaningful for all of us. The idea is for teachers to give kids information and tools that they can use in later life and since most of them see these papers as something that teachers require just to have something to grade, bold initiatives like Mrs. Groom's may be the first steps toward a better education system.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071031/ap_on_hi_te/techbit_wikipedia_term_papers;_ylt=AouitNlfbXbWaHSRoJGqtfus0NUE

by Corina Ciubotaru for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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