LearnHub

I’ve taken several blended learning graduate level courses in education that I think were effective. We usually met face-to-face about every three weeks to discuss our projects and had weekly online assignments due during the other two weeks. The e-learning portion was all asynchronous (i.e., there were no set meeting times). We could read our assignment and post our comments and replies to comments at any time within a week.

I am, among other things, an ESOL teacher at an elementary school in Maryland. Our county is at least taking baby steps in the right direction (towards rewarding excellence), as it has instituted a pilot pay-for-performance teacher incentive program . I certainly hope they’ll find the funding to roll out the program to the entire county. Perhaps some U.S. policymakers are finally waking up to the practical and strategic advantages of fair and reasonable compensation for teachers.

Most teachers I know do not see the possibilities of teaching as a business for themselves or others. As someone who loves teaching, but feels underpaid compared to what I made in my previous career (and has an MBA), I’m interested in learning anything I can about online opportunities to offer my teaching/tutoring/training skills at a “fair financial exchange” to others.

I tested the blue elephant/red elephant/yellow elephant jokes on my kids. They thought it was really funny and gave it two thumbs up.

It seems I’m not getting any authority points for completing a lesson. I just joined recently, but I’ve completed at least 4-5 lessons. Has anyone else noticed this?

This is a fascinating documentary. Personally, I can see both sides of the debate. Like lechuck, my personal experience with Wikipedia has been positive. I think it is a great tool for someone like me for getting some background information about almost anything.

Like the African digital activist, I am excited by “the act of creating knowledge with other people” that Wikipedia offers to those who post on it. Like Meri and Kim, as an educator I see it as potentially a wonderful opportunity to promote cooperative learning.

My teenage daughter just graduated from a highly competitive middle school magnet program in which the teachers – for good reason – refused to allow students to cite Wikipedia for any research papers. I believe this is reasonable, since the information on Wikipedia is not 100% reliable.

I am concerned about the danger that too many college students, as well as some Wikipedia readers in developing countries with more limited access to other sources, (or anyone else who may not be a critical reader) may just assume that whatever they read on Wikipedia is the truth. It seems that the average person is more likely to believe as fact something he/she reads in print than the same information conveyed orally.

Furthermore, I realize that Wikipedia is updated frequently, but I wonder: What is the potential for a group of individuals with bad intentions to continually update sensitive subject areas of Wikipedia for malevolent purposes? For instance, after a deliberate Internet misinformation campaign, recent polls in the U.S. have found that ten percent of Americans still believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim. If you want to see a really disturbing example of lies masquerading as a “valuable resource for teachers and students alike”, just do a search of “Martin Luther King” and you’ll find the third website – I believe it’s MartinLutherKing.org. (This is a blatant example that an educator can use to teach students about the dangers of relying exclusively on the Internet for conducting research without considering the source of the information.)

Any Wikipedia experts out there – is my scenario far fetched?

Hi Meri,

Thanks for sharing this. I can see how WizIq could be a great tool for teaching ESOL online, particularly adults (I’m an ESOL teacher). I also am excited about learning how to use it for virtual team meetings, as Jza has.