Attending your One-on-One Conference will earn you one attendance credit for this week. However, to earn the second attendance credit, you must watch these two videos (they are super short!) and comment to this blog post (see my note, below). This should take you very little time. What, 15 minutes? You’re Welcome.
I need you to watch these two videos. These concepts are going to be super important to us going forward:
Please write in comments to this post and tell us your reactions. What do you think?! Do you read, laterally, as a rule? Were you told that Wikipedia is “bad”? I want to get some dialogue going on this post. So any reflection you have about your past or your style of research is really encouraged. (And, by the way, I LOVE Wikipedia! And I hear this all the time.)
P.S. If you had my class last semester, then you have probably already seen these. Feel free to just comment to this post / comment on other people’s comments — I will see your name there.
Never did I think I would be able to use Wikipedia in college, after all the times of not being allowed to use it. Using Wikipedia in order to find sources is a perfect way to find needed sources.
If you use it well, it is (IMHO) the fastest way to learn where you stand and what the heck things are. I don’t know what I would do without it.
I guess I did not put a time limit on this activity, and people are asking, so, please do it by Friday — when I do my attendance for the week.
I think there are differences and disputes in some contents of Wikipedia, but it is really convenient for us to simply understand some things, so I will use it sometimes.
Everything said in those videos is the opposite of what I was taught in school. I have always been taught to read laterally and to check the credibility of each source and website before using information from it, while in reality, I find Wikipedia and blog posts the most reliable sources. Instead of being taught how to use these resources the right way, we are taught how to ONLY use “trustworthy” resources, making it seem as if Wikipedia is bad. (imagine)
By using Wikipedia, you can find so much important information that other sources might not give and it’s less time-consuming.
Everything said in those videos is the opposite of what I was taught in school. I have always been taught to read laterally and to check the credibility of each source and website before using information from it, while in reality, I find Wikipedia and blog posts the most reliable sources. Instead of being taught how to use these resources the right way, we are taught how to ONLY use “trustworthy” resources, making it seem as if Wikipedia is bad. (imagine)
By using Wikipedia, you can find so much important information that other sources might not give and it’s less time-consuming.
I’ve never really thought about how I read articles on the internet but thinking about it now, I do first read vertically and then laterally. I read/skim through an article in almost its entirety and then start to fact-check it afterward. The videos showed me how inefficient this probably is instead of fact-checking point by point, especially if you’re going to have to rule out multiple websites. This method is something I’m going to try and install into myself going forward.
On the topic of Wikipedia, I remember being in third grade and having my teachers make it a universal rule to NEVER use Wikipedia, and this continued pretty much until now for this class. The reasoning I always got for this, from teachers, was “anyone can write anything they want on it and change anything they want, so it’s not a good site to use.” In the early 2010s, The main thing I got from my teachers was to use .org sites the most, which obviously is faulty, and can look more professional/governmental than it is. I just went with the flow and continued to use Wikipedia for my own use instead.
When I look up materials online, the first thing I do is to make sure the information is credible, since most of the materials are used for schoolwork. So it must be confirmed.
I was taught a long time ago not to use Wikipedia because the content on it can be modified by anyone at any time, so it is not trustworthy. I’ll use Wikipedia, but I’ll judge for myself which ones are credible. This saves me a lot of time. Because every time I look for information. Wikipedia is always on top.
I’ve always been taught laterally and finding sources that are reliable and credible for those websites. Ever since in school those were the most important thing to do in order to pass those classes that’s how I’ve made it to where I am now. Especially finding these sources we need to do it in MLA format for some of these websites, cause it does give us some good general idea.
I’ve always been told ever since middle school, teachers and students around the school would always tell me that Wikipedia is a “bad” source to use because people can easily edit it and change things up. But I’ve never thought that Wikipedia will be such a useful source since some other websites can’t even produce those deeper details about somethings.
I don’t think I was ever necessarily taught to read laterally or vertically. When doing research I tend to pick a source that seems reliable. If possible I like to find an academic article first, but as many of us know that’s not always the easiest to find. I will pick a website and read through it, but I will look for multiple websites to confirm a fact or something I intend on using in an assignment. Regarding Wikipedia, many of my professors in the past have strongly advised against it, saying it is not a valid source. It was drilled into my head that anyone can edit a Wikipedia post and I never questioned it. I never had a problem with Wikipedia in the past, but I never wanted to get penalized for using it. Upon watching this video, I learned that the most important and viewed facts are locked and can only be edited by certain people. Also if you think about it most websites don’t update their facts at all or as fast as Wikipedia. I will definitely be more open to using Wikipedia in my future. I always found it a very helpful tool, but was nervous to use it.
I also never knew that anyone can buy a .org domain. I find that very interesting. In grammar school and high school teachers seemed to praise .org websites.
These two videos are interesting to know that Wikipedia can be helpful knowing that Wikipedia are monitored by fact checks and could be changed! Not just anyone but by highly administrative people who have access and of course if the page has the most clicks on it and many people have visited the page. When it comes to mistakes and information might not be updated to some websites Wikipedia updates it’s fast more then other websites and according to research average wikipedia users can find 3 mistakes and scientific wikipedia webpages have about 2 mistakes. I have been told since I have been taking English classes to not use wikipedia and to finding out to use wikipedia wisely it’s just out of my boundaries to do something I have been avoiding ever since I have been writing research papers and essays. It’s also interesting to know that fact checkers read laterally compared to students who read everything efficiently save up more time and that fact checkers majority of them look at references.
Using Wikipedia was something that I was taught not to use in school. I was told that Wikipedia was not a reliable source and the information that was on there was not credible. It was interesting after watching the video to know that personal fact checkers used Wikipedia as their first source of information. I never thought of Wikipedia to have reliable information because of what I was told so I stayed away from it. To know now that there can be some reliable information on there will help me out with future research.
The two videos I watched showed how to use information wisely even on Wikipedia when every teacher i been with told me never to trust or use Wikipedia but this video showed me how. It showed how videos showed are not really what you get you have to scroll and find the right sources to use and how to use a checklist and the right sites to use. Lateral reading is important and we need to see how it works not told. Lateral reading helps us become more informed and better readers.
All that said in those recordings is something contrary to what I was educated in school. I have generally been instructed to peruse along the side and to actually take a look at the validity of each source and site prior to utilizing data from it. Particularly observing these sources we want to do it in these sites because it really helps give us general thought.
I found out a few years ago that wikipedia can be edited by anyone and I stopped using them to cite or research any information. Personally, I begin any scouring of the internet through google which I probably shouldn’t do because it leaves room for random internet searching to pop up and entice me. The vocabulary “reading laterally” is new to me, ive never heard this type of searching before. Subconsciously now I do read laterally because somethings sound ridiculous and its a bit easier to decide that when I check if the source is credible or not.
It’s hard to distinguish any source whether it is a good source or a bad source. we need to think critically that any source is biased and unbiased. and the involvement of research institutes and experts but still it can be biased because of sponsor personal interest. anything can be modified by manipulation of words and sentences. It’s good to get general information from Wikipedia but it’s not a genuine source.