Wikiality: The More Things Change...

The world is flat. No, the world is round. No, actually the world is only one thing, changing. And, depending on your outlook, this fact clearly divides you into one of two categories: You are either enthusiastic about change and embrace it like you’re hugging your child after their first day of school, or you are worried about change so you avoid thinking about it like a bump under your left armpit. Don’t tell me you’re on both sides; deep down you know where you stand. So which side of the fence are you on?

Me, I’m a hugger. I possess abnormally long skinny arms, but I can hug with a strength that may surprise you. This ability to embrace is a particular asset in my classroom… with technology. Even as a naïve student teacher in Mrs. Labelle’s grade three class, I embraced technology in my lessons because I believed that technology could act as a unique window to learning (Roberts, 2005). And though the most advanced technology in her class was an old tank of an overhead transparency projector; I stood over that hot, metal box for part of every lesson I nervously taught that fall.

This September past (seven years later), I made the decision to not sign-out an overhead for the school year. I realized that I wasn’t using one in my lessons and the bulky machine took up a lot of space. So, did I get a fancy new multimedia projector installed? No, I wish. I rolled in the single multimedia projector cart I share with my entire department, every time I wanted to access Youtube, a PowerPoint or a website of interest. I continue to embrace technology, despite its sometimes difficult terms. This is because of what futurist David Houle suggests, that we live in a new “shift age” where the speed of change in information and technology is constant (2009). I see this when browser bookmarks made for my courses one semester have become broken links by the next. I’ve learned to accept this, as the way we access information has undeniably changed.

Consider Wikipedia; launched earlier this decade, the English version of this free, online encyclopedia has 12,965,780 registered users (nearly a third the population of Canada). Now consider the fact that there is no one author, no one authority. When Stephen Colbert, tongue in cheek, said of Wikipedia, "What we're doing is bringing democracy to knowledge" (2006), his words were satirical but also accurate. After hundreds of years of patronizing, theoretically democratic societies, wikis are finally where the people truly rule a domain in practice. Certainly, the people who contribute to Wikipedia are not experts, but only statements that can be verified by other published sources are allowed to remain on the website in the long-term. Lies, jokes, and propaganda are posted on Wikipedia everyday and also removed, because it is the responsibility of the users to challenge and remove content that cannot be verified.

Some people think Wikipedia is worse than toilet paper because it lacks an author in the traditional sense, but I have to wonder. Which text is more accurate: a traditionally published text from twenty years ago, or an online text that has been edited thousands of times? The intelligent response is that neither text is necessarily more accurate. Again it is the responsibility of the reader to assess a source for credibility, accuracy, reasonableness, and support of all claims (Harris, 2007). Aren’t those the very skills being honed by the users of wikis?

‘Wikiality’, another phrase coined by Colbert as, a reality where, if the majority agrees with a notion, it becomes the truth (2006), is not something that makes me jump ship from being an embracer of change, to becoming a worrier. An understanding of reality based on popular opinion is how the world has always operated, just not quite so quickly and democratically. Remember, the world is flat. No, the world is round.

References

Colbert, S. (Artist). (2006). The Word: wikiality. [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/72347/july-31-2006/the-word---wikiality

Harris, R. (2007, June, 15). Evaluating internet research sources. Retrieved from http://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm

Houle, D. (2009, November 18). Speed of change. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkPEOXyO42A&feature=related

Roberts, G.R. (2005). Educating the net generation (Technology Expectations of the Net Generation), Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen/ doi: 0-9672853-2-1

Academic Integrity: Navigating Digital Waters

“A ship in harbor is safe -- but that is not what ships are built for.” (Shedd, 1928)

I was recently in a computer lab with my grade 12 English class when I came across two girls, clearly off topic, madly googling in tandem. Before I directed them back to their assigned task I paused; curious what they were looking for. I scanned over their query for ‘Meaningful Images’. Without turning her eyes from the screen, one girl plainly said, “We’re like, looking for like, a really meaningful image… for the tattoo I’m gonna get tonight."

I was flabbergasted! Who hadn’t shown these girls how to use effective search terms? In all seriousness, these two young ladies were not unintelligent. I believe they were, simply put, ‘lost at sea’.

Don't believe that the Internet is “an information super highway” (Gore 1991); that term is far too simple, and too linear, and too 1991. The Internet it is a vast ocean of ideas too wide for anyone to swim unaided. Strong currents in art, science, and history are continually flushing with undercurrents of taboo topics, and countless conduits dumping unfiltered opinions and toxic levels of spam. While society agrees that a child should be protected from these often murky, on-line waters for their lack of discernment, should it be a surprise to anyone that our students are resorting to plagiarism because they are unable to navigate the sea of information?

Now I should state that I’m not trying to present plagiarists as victims. I simply sympathize for anyone who has been placed in a boat, handed an oar, and told, “Go find a place you’ve never been before without a map”. This is in essence, what often occurs with our students and online research. Without proper preparation, it should be no surprise that many students end up floating aimlessly and desperately dipping into the pool of ideas, calling it a ‘personal discovery’ (an actual term once used by a student I caught plagiarizing).

In the digital age plagiarism almost seems an unsinkable foe, surfacing too often. In our places of learning plagiarism is becoming common, even predictable. New software aims to bust the rule-breakers, but should we be happy to pay a hi-tech crew to round up our pirates? Obviously, this software is not an end-all solution. It only attempts to scare those contemplating plagiarism and catch the offenders, and clearly punishing criminals has not eradicated crime from our society. So, how do we sink cheating? We don’t. We steer our students from it.

Academic integrity is a set of conventions, but cannot be maintained as an old code for the university bound as it was in the past, because the map and scale of our intellectual sphere is ever-changing. These days through the Internet, a six year old can access almost an equal amount of information as post-doc academics. But are we training these children for proper Internet use? Or are children getting lost?

Technology is simply the building of better boats, and there are plenty of fancy new boats out there. Academic integrity is simply a boater’s license. Around where I live, you need that little piece of paper to take out the simplest of watercraft, because it could be deadly to allow a person on the water without adequate knowledge and skills. Consider again the two young women in my grade 12 class in their search for “meaningful images”. Would you take a seat in their boat?

References

Gore Jr., A. (1991, January 1). Information superhighways: the next information

revolution. The Futurist, 25, 21-23.

Shedd, John A. (1928). Salt From My Attic. Portland, ME: The Mosher Press.