Author: everetts.17

Wikipedia: To Cite or Not To Cite

I can remember hearing countless time during my education, “make sure to cite your sources, but do not use Wikipedia as one of your sources.” I’m sure many of you have heard the same thing.

What makes Wikipedia a non-credible source to many? This might help explain why. But is it really that unreliable? Perhaps Wikipedia is more than we give it credit for.

Wikipedia Logo

Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia

Compared to other sources, Wikipedia offers multiperspectivalism. Many people, voluntarily, contribute and edit Wikipedia pages. While information added can be incorrect, it is constantly being edited; each page being fine tuned and expanded. Every contributor comes to Wikipedia with their own background, knowledge and perspective. That is what makes Wikipedia so diverse, expansive and collaborative.

In “Networked Expertise in the Era of Many-to-many Communication: On Wikipedia and Invention,” Pfister discusses the role multiperspectivalism plays for Wikipedia:

If the first way that many-to-many communication reshapes the relationship between invention and expertise is to reshuffle traditional attention routines, the second significant effect of these new communication environments is a facilitation of multiperspectivalism. This multiperspectivalism emerges, not necessarily in the main article entry itself, but in the edit history and talk pages that constitute the substrata of Wikipedia. Herbert Gans (1979/2004, 2011) famously argued that traditional top-down news formats privilege particular views with the consequence that what gets covered is a very narrow slice of the actual news. How that news is framed shapes how citizens attend to it—if at all. Multiperspectival news, his proposed alternative, is journalism that draws in the opinions of the many in an attempt to better encompass available opinions…If multiperspectival news is desirable, then surely so is a multiperspectival encyclopedia. The many-to-many communication on the edit and talk pages reveals behind[1]the-scenes conflicts from multiple perspectives that need(ed) negotiation before some contingent consensus was reached.

Many-to-many communication – isn’t that better than one source with one perspective? I’d think so.

Are educators concerns with Wikipedia justified? Somewhat.

While Wikipedia may not always be accurate, it is a culmination of many people coming together to add their own knowledge. So next time you write an academic paper, use Wikipedia, but be aware of its accurateness. Instead of relying on it’s validity, use it to explore multiple perspectives you might not have considered or known.

The Colorization of Writing

History has shown that writing by black and white people are not perceive the same, even if both writings are grammatically correct.

An early example of this is Phillis Wheatley. She was an African American slave who published her own poetry. She wrote her poetry so it was grammatically correct and would be read easily and be indistinguishable from white writing. But Thomas Jefferson read her work and said she did not write it because she was black; no black person could ever write poetry that well.

Grammar Tree

Sentence. Noun Phrase: Determiner – The, Noun – man. Verb Phrase: Verb – bit, Noun Phrase: Determiner – the, Noun – dog.

That got me thinking. Aside from Wheatley’s race, what was it about her writing that made Jefferson think she didn’t write it? Her writing followed grammatical rules and was written in a

way to appease white people, so why did he not accept it? Has this judgement regarding overall literacy of African Americans gotten better? Not entirely.

One major discrimination today against African American literacy is African American vernacular, or African American language (AAL). Standard American English (SAE) is what is taught in schools. It is tested on placement tests like the ACT and SAT, but it is not everyone’s primary form of English. In an educational setting, any other form of English is “incorrect.”

In “‘wuz good wit u bro’: Patterns of Digital African American Language Use in Two Modes of Communication,” Cunningham studies the use of AAL. He finds that AAL Follows predictable patterns that a language needs:

Both DAAL text messages and SNS posts served the function of creating brief or concise messages that are visually different from SAE while also approximating the phonological patterns of AAL. Pedagogically, these consistencies of composition and function speak to the literacy practices of DAAL interlocutors, demonstrating their ability to use multiple linguistic varieties, which, if valued, utilized, and examined in the classroom, can be an asset rather than a detriment to rhetorical knowledge, literacy skills, and composing ability. Overall, this research illuminates the multiple linguistic repertoires necessary when composing DAAL and the consistency of linguistic and paralinguistic patterns and functions between the two corpora further suggest the ways in which DAAL is a valuable, pragmatic hybrid literacy.

If AAL is the common form of English for African Americans, it should be accepted in schools. A prior blog post discusses in more detail the change that needs to happen in schools.

Using SAE furthers the stereotype and belief that African American’s can’t write or speak well when they can. Criticism that Wheatley faced is still common in schools today; it just has taken a new form. And it needs to be discussed.

How the Pandemic Has Changed Classroom Etiquette: Will In-Person Class be the Same?

A couple weeks ago, I was logged in my Colonial and US Literature Zoom class when the chat started blowing up.  A number of my classmates were engaging with the material in a nonconventional way. They were memeing with the class content.

Watching the events of class unfold got me thinking about how the pandemic has revolutionized school. Students wouldn’t say what they were saying in the chat in an actual classroom. In less than a year, a new school etiquette has formed.

Now with school being done virtually, students log in, mute themselves and turn off their camera. A lot of the time, the only person visible to the class is the professor. Hardly any students speak in class; the professor talks to black screens with student’s names. The chat feature is popular and contributing to the class via chat is acceptable now.

While ruminating about online class, I began to worry about the eventual transition back to normal, unrestricted in-person classes.

There is no chat feature in the classroom. Students cant mute themselves, turn off the camera and walk away. Will students be able to sit around others, look them in the eye and participate in person? I sure do hope so.

Nicholas Carr discusses the internet and it’s implications on our brain and life in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr addresses some concerns about the internet that I share. He too fears that humans have become too reliant on the internet, and in effect, humans do not perform intellectually like they used too. But thankfully Carr also offers us hope. Habits learned from the internet are not permanent:

The human brain is almost infinitely malleable. People used to think that our mental meshwork, the dense connections formed among the 100 billion or so neurons inside our skulls, was largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. But brain researchers have discovered that that’s not the case. James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, says that even the adult mind “is very plastic.” Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. “The brain,” according to Olds, “has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions.”

I’m sure we will readapt and adopt a classroom environment similar to before, but perhaps we won’t. Either way our brain will adapt, and school will go on.

Twitter Paving the Way for More Concise Written Language

Since its emergence, Twitter has forever changed the way we write.

Posts, AKA Tweets, are little bits of information that users share with their followers. Tweets are limited to a 280 character limit, meaning messages must be short and to the point.

But what does the evolution of the first instance of writing tell us about the way Twitter changes the way we write?

Before we address the question, let’s talk about the one of the earliest forms of writing. Researh indicates that early civilizations used clay envelopes (bulla) filled with tokens. These tokens represented different objects, and on the outside of the envelope were engravings denoting what was inside. This envelope system worked, but as time went by, it was easier to just engrave. Denise Schmandt-Besserat explains this significant writing changes:

At first the innovation flourished because of its convenience; anyone could “read” what tokens a bulla contained and how many without destroying the envelope and its seal impressions. What then happened was virtually inevitable, and the substitution of two-dimensional portrayals of the tokens for the tokens themselves would seem to have been the crucial link between the archaic recording system and writing. (read more here)

Over time, we have found ways to simplify writing. With Twitter, the limited space has led to the use of acronyms, abbreviations and emojis to convey the user’s message. The meaning has not changed, just the way it was written has.

Just like early civilizations simplified their writing system, Twitter users continue to simplify their writing. If writing can be condensed, it will be.

Will we ever reach a point where writing can’t be further simplified? I don’t know, but that is a question for another time.