In the latest round in the fight between the educational system and technological progress, New Jersey schools are talking about banning students from using Wikipedia as a resource in the classroom. Their argument: there is too much unverified information that is so easy to access that students may be tempted to use it as a primary source. In other words, students are lazy and don’t know any better.
No encyclopaedia should be used as a primary source for the simple fact that the articles themselves are watered down versions of primary sources: books written by experts with direct experience in the subject. An encyclopaedia is a good starting point because it gives a broad summary of the topic and shows where one should look next. How do you start researching a topic that you know absolutely nothing about? Wikipedia is actually a superior resource in this respect because articles are required to have citations or they get flagged, and you can simply click on the citation link to find out where the information came from. Now you have primary sources to base your research on. Wikipedia also teaches collaboration and allows students to revise articles and share other primary information that they may have found (with proper citations of course).
This is where educators need to step up to the plate. Students need to be educated on the difference between primary and secondary sources, and graded appropriately when they fail to use the proper resource.
To quote a very close friend of mine, Henry: “Call me old-fashioned, but when I was in school the teachers actually KNEW the subject they were teaching and could spot a paraphrased encyclopaedia article a mile away. The Internet is the greatest tool to locate obscure information, yet teachers act like you should spend your days crawling through the card catalog at the local library (do they even USE card catalogs anymore?) Instead of being afraid of the technology and restricting its use, they should be teaching students how to use the technology effectively.”
ServerBeach attended the Blog World & New Media Expo last week in Las Vegas Nevada. It was an awesome experience for the employees that attended and we learned quite a bit from the bloggers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners.
Our very own Product Engineering Manager, Joe Rodriguez did a presentation with Barry from WordPress discussing how WordPress is able to handle the traffic it receives as well as the scalability and reliability from the ServerBeach side. I didn’t get a chance to speak to Barry until the last day we were there and it’s been a while since I had seen him back in our old ‘working side by side’ days but having the chance to talk to him was awesome. He’s doing wonders with his work and I’m very much impressed and proud to know him!
It’s been a few years since I last visited Las Vegas and man has it changed. Joe and I had so many plans to do this and that but by the end of the days work we were too tired to do anything but eat! We did walk around the strip for a while when we first arrived waiting to check into our hotels, but quickly realized how tired we were after getting up early to catch the flight out there. Speaking of hotels, we stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel … it kicked ass! My room was amazing. The bed was perfect, the flat screen TV on the wall, all the space, it was just huge. I’ll definitely be staying there when I return to Vegas.
Walmart has been selling Linux computers for quite a few years now at a pretty reasonable price. Now, they’re taking orders online for a new system they’re offering called the Green gPC, made by Everex of Taiwan and they’re offering it at $199.00. They say it’ll be available in approximately 600 stores as well as online.
According to a news article I read this morning, “The variant of Linux on the gPC is called gOS and is derived from the popular Ubuntu variant. It’s heavily oriented toward Google’s Web sites and online applications, like YouTube, Gmail and the company’s word processing program, all of which can be used only when the computer is connected to a broadband line.”
Another article describes this as a Google-friendly PC, but to me it sounds like it may be the first GooglePC. People have been talking about Google trying to edge in on Microsoft territory with their online applications, but they don’t have any penetration in the market for PC hardware. Today, you can buy a $200.00 PC that doesn’t need to have software on it to be useful. It’s a realization of Google’s ubiquitous computing.
