Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Filed under: Wikipedia

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.