SO, about that midweek post... Yeah that didn't happen. But I warned you! I did. Perhaps now, you know...
Moving on.
So this week's lesson has been possibly the most eye-opening for me thus far. For one thing, I learned that I had the completely wrong idea in my head as to what a "wiki" was. That's always a fun experience. Not that I had a lot of stock in my knowledge of the term, but as an aspiring English professor, I need to know these things. Need to, I say! But no biggie, really.
After learning what a wiki truly was, though, I realized that I use them on a nearly daily basis. I suppose that I've been using them for years, ever since high school. The use of systems like Blackboard and Moodle in schools does an immeasurable service to teachers and students alike. I mean opening up a website for editing that the entire world may benefit may seem like a ludicrous idea on the surface, but I believe that many people underestimate the human desire for knowledge. It often surprises me how easy it is to find answers on the internet to what seem to be the most random questions in the world. Yes, there is the fact that it seems that almost everything in the world has to be on the internet somewhere, but honestly. I had a roommate in college who was pre med, and when he had an especially difficult time figuring out an equation for biochem or something, he would post on a forum, and almost always he had an answer (and a correct one, at that, with full explanation) within 24 hours. I think that this is because humans not only like pointing out that they know things, but also because they have always had a quest for finding the truth, and hoarding knowledge is a natural bi-product of that. So take something like Wikipedia, give everyone with an internet connection the chance to tell the world the facts of... well, the world, and the amount of response is staggering. We want the truth. Some like to toy with it, but the overall majority want the truth, and that is why we love things like Wikipedia.
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