Encyclopedia Discussion and Teacher Needs

We know Encyclopedias can be our first source of acquiring general knowledge about a subject. Wikipedia has been vilified by many educational institutions as well as academics as providing inaccurate information. However we find all types of people in all walks of life using this as their first source of information and then going to other online sources or print material for additional information.

In schools we are finding more students are going to online resources to gather their information for research papers. Therefore as Harris has said, we may need to make peace with Wikipedia, as students are familiar with this source either through home use, or because many schools do not have access to other online encyclopedias. Using Wikipedia for their overview is fine as long as work has been done before hand. The intermediate teachers at my elementary school, use the text book, print books and then allow students to go to Wikipedia to gather additional information. When they take information from Wikipedia they are told to check it against another source to make sure it is accurate. I don’t think this is a phenomena we can easily change, but like anything else we need to prepare students for the reality of life. As adults, we often check with other sources when we are making big life decisions. Kids need to know that not everything published on the internet is accurate, and to get a good overview we need to look at other sources to help us through the decision making process. That little research project they are working on in school is their first step towards being a critical thinking learner.

I am not teaching information skills to the intermediate classes due to my limited library time. When speaking to teachers, one of the problems I’ve heard from some of the intermediate teachers is that some of the print and online resources they are using with students are not providing enough in-depth information on various ancient cultures topics being taught in SS, an example being farming in Mesopotamia. Part of the problem may be that the IRP’s outcomes do not always match print the online sources we have access to. Teachers find students are given a general overview rather than a thorough in-depth look at a topic. Another problem teachers are noticing is that when they talk about tools or other topics, often an image isn’t available to help solidify the visual for the student .

Hearing these kinds of problems teachers are encountering with research, I believe my job when purchasing references whether online or print, I need to delve much deeper to investigate the scope and emphasis the reference source places on the topics I know teachers and students want to explore and which will give them a more thorough grounding in their topic. Therefore I realise I must confer with these teachers more frequently and ask if references are meeting their needs and their students needs and how I can help achieve these needs.