Judging the Quality of Wikis and Non-vetted Sites

My profession has had a very public and direct opinion about Wikipedia.  Librarians, especially reference and academic librarians have been openly opposed to Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s mission seems to be totally incompatible with that of librarians; as the goal of a librarian is to evaluate the quality of resources, and many question Wikipedia’s quality. The reason for this is mainly due to the credibility of Wikipedia, or lack thereof. Two main things that librarians have a problem with, concerning Wikipedia are: the massive amount of errors on the site, both grammatical and factual. The second reason is that with Wikipedia anyone can contribute to it by adding or removing anything that they want, which colors our judgment of the site. There’s absolutely nothing stopping a person from adding false information or deleting legitimate information from the site which that alone makes it unreliable.  When I teach my classes and do library orientations I strongly discourage students from using the site as a reference and will not accept it as a legitimate source. Librarians consider ourselves as experts in regard to evaluating and recommending top notch scholarly resources. We spend a lot of time and money searching for the best scholarly articles and databases written by scholars and academic leaders, which for the most part does not seem to include Wikipedia. And with the thousands of articles and databases that schools provide, especially colleges it seems reckless to use a source such as Wikipedia.  That’s not to say that every library resource has unimpeachable reliability, but the sources that we pick has been evaluated and generally has the seal of approval, meaning that the book is useful and good in some regard.

With all that being said, all librarians are not as skeptical of Wikipedia as they once were. Since the site was launched in 2001 it has made some major improvements, which greatly increased its credibility and reliability. The fact that Wikipedia is a fixture of the internet now and is said to be in the top ten of the most popular websites on the internet forces me, and librarians in general to give the site a closer glance and perhaps see what we can do as a profession to make it more accurate for our students. Also Wikipedia has made major efforts to make the site more credible. It has implemented many defense mechanisms specifically designed to prevent people from interfering with the sites credibility. One of the other good things about Wikipedia is their use of crowdsourcing; which is their use of gathering information from anyone all over the world. However as of now I and most librarians still see Wikipedia as an unreliable source, mainly because we are skeptical of the crowd’s wisdom whom are providing this information.

Building and Refining my PLN

Feedly/RSS

 

Blog name: Bright ideas


Blog address: http://slav.global2.vic.edu.au/2013/11/29/school-library-blog-making-connections/#.UwehC9GYaB0

I chose Bright ideas blog because it is more than just a blog of opinions. Its entire goal is to encourage teacher librarians and educators to use tools and share them with one another. It focuses on networking on a larger scale than simply having a local connection. It encourages a global scale of networking so that teachers, librarians and educational administrators can share information with one another.

The reason that this blog caught my attention is because it has many links and webinars¸ some of which focuses on Web 2.0 and wikis, which hit home because those are the very things that we are talking about in class. Mostly I love that the name of the blog “bright ideas” is simple and straight forward, the whole premise is that people share their bright ideas with one another to further benefit their students.

Blog name: Stephen’s Lighthouse

Blog address: http://stephenslighthouse.com/2013/12/17/free-online-learning-tool-encourages-parent-engagement-in-school-libraries/

I chose Stephen’s Lighthouse blog because it was a blog created by a librarian and a consultant who blogs about strategies to help librarians and educators to use different strategies, guided direction, marketing and technology all in collaboration to all of its users.

One of the reasons that this blog stands out is because it focuses on parent engagement and how it relates to student achievement. It gives tutorials and training to help parents engage with students to improve student scores. The site helps parents to support their children’s libraries by encouraging reading and information literacy. It gives ideas about literacy events which includes lunchtime book clubs and family reading.

Blog name: Youth Service Corner

Blog address: http://www.youthservicescorner.com/

I chose Youth Services Corner blog because it is a specific resource for teens and librarians and whoever works with them. It focuses on books, pop culture, websites and other things that might interest teens and at the same time helps them learn.

What made this blog stand out to me are the recurring themes of the blog such as (1) a library spotlight that highlights library teen webpages, teen spaces from around the country. (2) Reviews of different movies, TV shows, websites and music that may be of interest to teens. (3) Program ideas for libraries. (4) Links of the week, which focuses on news articles and blogs for that week that might interest teens. (5) Books to Movies, a summary of movies that were based on books.  I like all of these themes because it brings what young people are doing every day to the library and helps the two collaborate.

Twitter

Expert/Organization: @TheLitPlatform

A Little about them: The Literary Platform is an online magazine that focuses on the collaboration between books and technology. They work with schools exploring the impact of technology and books.

Expert/Organization: @roseholck

A Little about them: An author, librarian, and technology teacher who can also change a tire and install a kitchen sink.

 

Expert/Organization: @aasl

A Little about them: The American Association of School Librarians is a community of librarians and educators who collaborate for social and professional networking.

 

Expert/Organization: @ldfredrickson

A Little about them: Linda Fredrickson is a school librarian who provides information via twitter such as: free technology tools, links, videos and other information to teachers and librarians.

 

Expert/Organization: @DPS_librarian

A Little about them: Sudi Stodola is a Teacher-Librarian in Denver Public Schools who focuses on Educational technology and blended learning. She refers to it as-THE LIBRARY IS MY CLASSROOM.

 

Paragraph Reflection

I have never really used twitter, actually before this class I didn’t even have a twitter account. However now that I have one I’ve able to follow people that I am most interested in. Included in that are President Obama, Oprah, various reality stars and some classmates. I haven’t used it much for educational purposes as of yet but the ability to use it is great, and as I get more involved in the process I will use it more often, specifically for educational purposes. I have used the feedly to follow and read various blogs that I’m interested in, some educational and some for recreation such as cooking recipes. I have gravitated more toward feedly, it allows me to read opinions and information about anything that I follow, which is why I enjoy it so much.

Week 4-SAMR Model

Week 4-SAMR Model

I am a librarian but have instructional classes at a local community college. My area of focus is generally library instruction, meaning teaching students how to use the resources of the library to help them throughout their academic career. I also teach specialized classes dealing with research, technology basics and advancement, citation, and various other things. I try as often as possible to implement various forms of technology into my instruction. Using the SAMR model listed below are a few things that I've already done with students and many things that I now plan to do in the near future.

Substitution: When dealing on the substitution level, I could and have used eBooks to have reading groups and/or books clubs. In this case students are using the new technology of eBooks to replace paper books. Another example is that I could use Google Docs to replace Microsoft Word.

Augmentation: On this level of Augmentation, still dealing with eBooks, the basic functions of eBooks can be used such as Read to Me and dictionary definition. And when using Augmentation as it relates to Google docs, instead of writing a document and saving it in order to share it with others, with Google Docs students can use auto saving, auto syncing, and auto sharing in the cloud.

Modification: On this level I’ve tried using the camera function in order for students to be able to record readings. On this level as it relates to Google Docs students can use the commenting service to do things like collaborate and share feedback on a task..

 

Redefinition: On the last level students can use iBooks Author to create media rich ePub books. And as far as this level as it relates to Google Docs students can use shared Google documents for notetaking either during the sessions or to use in their  regular classrooms, this is especially good for students as a review for exams.