{"id":24,"date":"2007-02-04T04:57:26","date_gmt":"2007-02-03T23:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrmaher.wordpress.com\/2007\/02\/04\/what%e2%80%99s-wikipedia\/"},"modified":"2023-02-22T22:27:26","modified_gmt":"2023-02-22T22:27:26","slug":"whats-wikipedia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/infinitude.maherpages.net\/index.php\/2007\/02\/04\/whats-wikipedia\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Wikipedia?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font size=\"2\"><font face=\"Arial\"> <\/font><font face=\"Arial\">Here  is yet another entry in the saga of vendor resource presentations for Social  Studies.  Another accomplished professional representing a prominent,  internationally recognized publishing company revealing an ignorance of the  current environment of educational technology.  <\/font><\/font><font face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"> In  a elementary school library, festooned with the posters, charts, maps, and  logo-ridden ephemera of a complete curriculum program, about twenty teachers  patiently sat through a presentation of materials offered for piloting in the  new K-5 Social Studies curriculum.  The  books were bright, beautiful and superbly organized.   Introducing the program with a media presentation on-screen, the sales  representatives raced through their program because they heard about our  intentions and wanted to show us that their program was \u201cloaded with tech\u201d.<\/font><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"> One  of the \u201cloaded with tech\u201d examples was a cd with a collection of flash games  aligned with the textbook.  Enamored  by the sights and sounds of crates of tea flying into Boston Harbor in an  American Revolution game, the sales representative smiled in pride when he  correctly answered the questions.  I  took about thirty seconds and found the following by searching \u201cSocial Studies  Flash\u201d  <\/font><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><font face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.historyglobe.com\/flash.html\">http:\/\/www.historyglobe.com\/flash.html<\/a>          <\/font><\/li>\n<li><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uen.org\/3-6interactives\/social_studies.shtml\"><font face=\"Arial\">http:\/\/www.uen.org\/3-6interactives\/social_studies.shtml<\/font><\/a><font face=\"Arial\">          <\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jc-schools.net\/tutorials\/interactive.htm\"><font face=\"Arial\">http:\/\/www.jc-schools.net\/tutorials\/interactive.htm<\/font><\/a><font face=\"Arial\">          <\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font size=\"2\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.teachervision.fen.com\/social-studies\/activity\/5835.html\"><font face=\"Arial\">http:\/\/www.teachervision.fen.com\/social-studies\/activity\/5835.html<\/font><\/a><font face=\"Arial\">          <\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><font face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><br \/>\nWhy  buy a set of social studies flash games when there are hundreds of them already  on the web?    <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\"><font face=\"Arial\"> <\/font><font face=\"Arial\">Unfortunately  for this company and many others, \u201cloaded with tech\u201d translates into \u201cour  textbook is online\u201d.  Although  this particular online version has a neat future that helps students of  different reading abilities by pulling out and enlarging the text, it is not  essentially different than the paper textbook.   The \u201ctech\u201d provides no benefit of technology.  <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">It  isn\u2019t that those of us committed to future focused learning don\u2019t like  textbooks, it\u2019s that we see them only providing basic content, not driving the  curriculum.  This is painfully obvious when we are told that our  technology needs will be satisfied by a textbook program because we can \u201cprint  out the worksheets\u201d.    <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\"><font face=\"Arial\"> <\/font><font face=\"Arial\">Those  of us committed to the new environment of communication and information tools  aren\u2019t not as enamored of the tech tools as we are convinced that the  traditional \u201cread a passage and answer the questions\u201d treadmill is so dated  an unhelpful to students, it\u2019s practically criminal.   To foist such mindless activities masquerading as critical thinking and  reading comprehension exercises on our children destroys their creativity and  convinces them that memorization is learning. If most of them were going to grow  up and work on assembly lines or in corporations where they would be performing  essentially the same task using essentially the same tools for their entire  career that would make sense.  But  where is that world now?    <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\"><font face=\"Arial\"> <\/font><font face=\"Arial\">Unfortunately,  the footprint of that world is still pressed on education publishing companies.  <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"> In  a conversation with one of the representatives after the presentation, I was  trying to make sense by explaining the intended direction of our new curriculum.   Giving examples of creative, project-based collaborate lessons, I  suggested that content is not as important as lesson ideas.   Perhaps we can look into a textbook, replete with their excellent  graphics, photos and presentation, but entirely editable.   Let the kids grab text, pictures and graphics and rearrange them \u2013  making a textbook that they can understand.   Let them create with their knowledge, sort of like Wikipedia.   <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"> Looking  puzzled, the rep asked me \u201cWhat\u2019s Wikipedia\u201d?  <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">   <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is yet another entry in the saga of vendor resource presentations for Social Studies. Another accomplished professional representing a prominent, internationally recognized publishing company revealing an ignorance of the current environment of educational technology. In a elementary school library, festooned with the posters, charts, maps, and logo-ridden ephemera of a complete curriculum program, about&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/infinitude.maherpages.net\/index.php\/2007\/02\/04\/whats-wikipedia\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">What\u2019s Wikipedia?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[45,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-2020","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infinitude.maherpages.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infinitude.maherpages.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infinitude.maherpages.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infinitude.maherpages.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infinitude.maherpages.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/infinitude.maherpages.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1099,"href":"https:\/\/infinitude.maherpages.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/1099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infinitude.maherpages.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infinitude.maherpages.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infinitude.maherpages.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}