Blair Teacher http://blairteacher.posterous.com Most recent posts at Blair Teacher posterous.com Sun, 06 Feb 2011 06:23:00 -0800 Informal Learning and Wikipedia http://blairteacher.posterous.com/informal-learning-and-wikipedia http://blairteacher.posterous.com/informal-learning-and-wikipedia

Jimmy Wales talks about how Wikipedia is used for informal learning. For many people it's the first port of call on the web if they want to know something. I may be a bit of a geek, but I have often been watching something on the TV then gone on to look on Wikipedia to find out more about it, often going on tangents and finding out about things I'd never heard of before, from the Wilhelm Scream to the Mandelbrot set.

There are still doubts about the veracity and the validity of Wikipedia however and most universities would often rightly question the use of Wikipedia as a secondary source for students. 

Nevertheless, the more it gets used, the better it becomes and the more refined the peer review gets. There may be a time when Wikipedia becomes the main portal for all knowledge.

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