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June 9, 2010, 5:24 pm
Jimmy Wales, a co-founder of Wikipedia, sits down with the Tech Therapy team to discuss the best—and worst—ways to use the online encyclopedia in teaching and research. And he challenges traditional newspapers to adopt some of Wikipedia’s practices.
Download this recording as an MP3 file, or subscribe to Tech Therapy on iTunes.
Technology continues to change college life, and each month The Chronicle's Tech Therapy podcast offers analysis and advice on what the latest gadgets and buzzwords mean for professors, administrators, and students.
Join hosts Jeff Young, a Chronicle reporter (left), and Warren Arbogast, a technology consultant who works with colleges, for a lively discussion—as well as interviews with leading thinkers in technology.
Jeff and Warren welcome your questions by e-mail, phone (805-CHE-TECH), or Twitter (@techtherapists).
As always, you can subscribe to Tech Therapy through iTunes. Click here—or just search for "Tech Therapy" in the iTunes store.
Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.
15 Responses to Episode 72: Wikipedia’s Co-Founder Calls for Better Information Literacy
Interesting series. Are transcripts available for those of us who are hard of hearing?
You’re missing the point ejhill. The point is not the redesign of Barbie, the point is that eating disorders are still an issue and way too prevalent.
Yes, the job of public university president is tough, and perhaps more so now than 20 year ago. But it is tough, in part, because we have become accustomed to choosing and rewarding public sector presidents for behaving like their colleagues in the private sector. We should not be surprised when they fly the coop!
That a student cannot relate to a certain character or situation does not necessarily mean that these characters and situations are wanting. It could just as easily be that the experiential background of the rater is lacking.
This reminds me of the evolution of the term “actionable”. It used to mean something you could be sued for. Now inexorable forces of decision support marketing are insisting it means something that indicates a course of action, as in “This survey yields targeted, actionable data.” An online dictionary gives both definitions, but it occurs to me that there’s a big difference between finding out your students aren’t satisfied with advising and finding out they could sue you for bad advising. Or maybe not such a big difference…
Relatable will join actionable, right next to strategize. We do not have to like them however!
Spotted on a U. of Maryland Family Weekend Highlights Web site (for parents) about a comedy show: “Onstage he shares hilarious, relatable moments
about living at home with his parents and avoiding as
much ‘real world’ responsibility as possible.” I can relate to that.
“relatable” is the new “flow.”
Experiential. Ugh! I wish we could also kill ‘finesse’ and ‘premiere’ used as verbs, and ‘protest’ used intransitively, as in, ‘he protested the Vietnam War.’ Has anyone remarked that the source of all of these, as well as the hideous ‘relatable’, is old fashioned laziness? ‘He protested against the Vietnam War’ is what is meant, which by itself is lazy shorthand for ‘He took part in public demonstrations against the Vietnam War.’ I’m glad to note that ‘collapse’ as in ‘This decision will collapse the peace process’ seems to have died the death, though when we are not collapsing the peace process we are apparently ‘growing’ it. The price of good prose is eternal vigilance.
O, and ‘critique’.
It seems the main point of the article is less to decry the
rampant verbing of nouns and creating words du jour but the idea that students’
use of the word in question is an attempt to shift responsibility away from
themselves as readers –“Not my fault that I don’t get it; it’s unrelatable.”
> A simple PhotoShop comparison of a real woman next to a Barbie shows that the proportions, while off, are not nearly as exaggerated as the model they built.
Do you have a reference for this conclusion?
I think the physical model, seen in real space, makes an impact like a 2D representation can’t.
http://ejhill1925.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/flunking-barbie.jpg
Here’s a good article on Barbie’s measurements for those interested.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7920962.stm
Missoula:
Sadly I agree with you. Interestingly the trend in college finance (namely the disinvestment of states in their public systems) goes directly against their stated goals of increasing college access and attainment. We know that relatively wealthy people are likely to attend and graduate college (that is, more likely than others). We also know that underprepared and underresourced students are the least likely to graduate. Since the states cannot magically produce more wealthy people, doesn’t it make sense (and isn’t it consistent with policy goals?) to subsidize college tuition costs for low income students? Can’t these state leaders see that they are taking with both hands here?