I guess I'm a little more reassured about the reliability of Wikipedia after reading this chapter. But I think the key is that it should not be the only resource, except for the most basic factual information. Since I teach elementary Spanish, I don't expect to have my students getting into in-depth research. They do need to look up facts such as dates of birth & death of famous Hispanics, and other basic information. Wikipedia is good for that. I'm still concerned that they'll come across information that's not appropriate for 10 to 12-year-olds.
I'm interested in learning more about Simple English Wikipedia Simple.wikipedia.org The text doesn't tell much about it. Is it geared for kids, or for adult English Language Learners? I'll have to check it out to see if it's useful for grades 5-6.
I'm getting an idea about what Wiki I want to set up for my students. It will be a project about three major cities in Mexico. I do the project every year. Students get assigned one of the cities. They find out some basic information about the city, especially the interesting tourist sights. They write a postcard in Spanish to someone at home, using the grammar and vocabulary we've worked on in class. They make a poster with the postcard, and photos of sights in the city. I think the project lends itself to a Wiki and look forward to setting it up.
I also felt a little bit better about wikipedia after reading the chapter. I was always told "don't look at wikipedia, it's not reliable information." Although it isn't the best source for research, I do agree that we can use it for factual information.
ReplyDeleteKaren,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your feeling of being more assured about Wikipedia after reading this chapter. It doesn't appear as daunting or as flaky. I was thinking that you could have your Spanish students research South American cultures. You could have different groups create a page for each country. Perhaps they could inbed a link to a translator site so that the kids could list some key Spanish vocabulary and then the visitors to the site could click on the link to find out what the words means (this would make it appear a bit more interactive as opposed to just giving them the definition). Key people, places, and events in the history of these places, as well as current events, could be featured in these Wikis.
I like your Mexico project idea. A different way of having the students find and present information. I may try try something similar with my students in Health with researching Nutrition information and presenting it. I also want to look into Simple English Wikipedia. And,I also feel that Wikipedia is more reliable than I thought after readiing this chapter.
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