On Wednesday, January 9th, Samara Carter and Monique Clark gave a presentation about using Wikipedia as a research tool at the annual Power Up Your Pedagogy (PUP) Conference held at the NOVA-Annandale campus. Below, you will find a copy of the presentation as well as answers to questions that were asked after the session. Clicking on the link will take you to the Slideshare page where the PowerPoint can be accessed.
Q&A
After the session, we had a question from the audience concerning the possibility of students plagiarizing articles from Wikipedia:
Plagiarism:
It seems with a brief glance over the internet that if students are copying word for word from Wikipedia and inserting into their text, it stands a decent chance of being caught using plagiarism software or with a Google search. If a student changes some vocabulary or switches parts of the sentence around, it is going to be harder to detect. Below are additional readings that include the article from Wikipedia regarding its policies on plagiarism and some additional websites.
Some articles…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Plagiarism
http://www.dustball.com/cs/plagiarism.checker/
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2011/12/07/the-limitation-of-every-plagiarism-checker/
http://doingdigitalhistory.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/diy-plagiarism-detection/
We had an additional question about the availability of Wikipedia in China:
China:
A Chinese Wikipedia has existed since 2001. Wikipedia was generally blocked by the government firewalls in China, but apparently those with tech-savvy skills were able to log-in and contribute with extensive work-arounds. As of 2012, most articles are now available in Chinese & English Wikipedias with censorship only affecting political articles (policy, political parties, etc.). It appears that the government has flipped its decision to censor Wikipedia several times, and that greater access is generally available in larger cities.
Some articles…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Wikipedia_in_mainland_China#China
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1029579/china-uncensors-wikipedia