Blog Juice for Educational Technology

Well, okay, it is inherently political, but my point here is really one of coherence and not politics. Yesterday I heard most of Bush's speech on his new torture policy. I was dumsbtruck when I heard the following sentences. I tried to ignore it, yet I heard this very text again on the radio a few minutes ago. No one has commented on what I see as a completely staggering illogic; does anyone else see the same problem?

Here's the text I'm referring to:

These men will be held in a high-security facility at Guantanamo. The International Committee of the Red Cross is being advised of their detention, and will have the opportunity to meet with them.

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Alan Liu posted the following on Humanist. I asked his permission to repost it here, and he consented. I'll post some thoughts of my own as a response to this post. For now, I'd offer that Dr. Liu's post seems to strike a good balance; I wonder how students would react to this statement.

Subject: Request for Comment: draft policy statement on student use of Wikipedia

Dear Willard,

This message is a request for comment (the humanities version of a RFC). 2006 appears to be the year that undergraduate students discovered Wikipedia in a big way. My colleagues and I have been seeing an increasing number of papers that use Wikipedia inappropriately as the sole or primary reference. For example, I just read a paper about the relation between Structuralism, Deconstruction, and Postmodernism in which every reference was to the Wikipedia articles on those topics with no awareness that there was any need to read a primary work or even a critical work. After writing comments to a number of students on this topic, I set to work on a general policy statement addressed to the student that might be shared among my local community of scholars (see draft below). I thought such a statement might be of general use. I welcome any suggestions from, or discussion by, the Humanist community as well as pointers to any similar statements that
may exist. (Still to do is a one-paragraph version of such a statement suitable for inclusion in a course syllabus.)

–Alan Liu, UC Santa Barbara

TO THE STUDENT: APPROPRIATE USE OF WIKIPEDIA

In recent years, Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org) has become one of the most important and useful resources on the Internet. Created by an open community of authors (anyone can contribute, edit, or correct articles), it has become a powerful resource for researchers to consult alongside other
established library and online resources. As in the case of all tools, however, its value is a function of appropriateness. In the case of college-level essays or research papers, students should keep in mind the following two limitations, one applying to all encyclopedias, and the other specifically to Wikipedia:

(1) As in the case of any encyclopedia, Wikipedia is not appropriate as the primary or sole reference for anything that is central to an argument, complex, or controversial. "Central to an argument" means that the topic in question is crucial for the paper. (For example, a paper
_about_ Shakespeare or postmodernism cannot rely on an encyclopedia article on those topics.) "Complex" means anything requiring analysis, critical thought, or evaluation. (For example, it is not persuasive to cite an encyclopedia on "spirituality.") "Controversial" means anything that
requires listening to the original voices in a debate because no consensus or conventional view has yet emerged. (For example, cite an encyclopedia on the historical facts underlying a recent political election, but not on themeaning or trends indicated by that election.) These limitations are due to the fact that encyclopedia articles are second- or third-hand summaries. They are excellent starting points for learning about something. But a college-level research paper or critical essay needs to consult directly the articles, books, or other sources mentioned by an encyclopedia article and use those as the reference. The best such sources are those that have been refereed ("peer-reviewed" by other scholars before acceptance for publication, which is the case for most scholarly journals and books) or, in the case of current events, journalistic or other resources that are relatively authoritative in their field.

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