Wikipedia-Wikitionary-Wikiversity

This week, we have been playing with these Web 2.o tools by creating our profiles and adding content to them. It's been an interesting experience.

Why interesting? Like many schools, our school regularly tells students not to use these resources as viable sources in their coursework. They are consider secondary sources of information. This is because you cannot link specific information on the page to a specific author and validate their credibility.

After our work this week of changing/adding entries, my viewpoint of the sites have changed slightly. Honestly, I never noticed the "History" tab in these sources to see the editing trail. You can see who exactly is editing the page.

But my view of student's using it as a credible source has not changed. Why? Because many of the authors do not elaborate about their credibility in their profiles. As part of our assignment, we had to update our profile, but an updated profile for every author seems rare. I do recommend to students that they use these tools as a launching point in their research. Let these tools give you some ideas. If you like what is stated, try to find that information in our library's databases from a clearly stated author.

I do enjoy the ease of these tools, how far they have come in a long time and their promising future. I am curious about how these tools will evolve as new technologies are created.