Eng. 1050 - 20
Writing Journal Assignment 1
After reading Monica Hesse's article, I realized that I fall into these groups of people that she talks about. For school work i usually dont use wiki articles because my teachers tell me not to, but if i am researching something for personal knowledge i find myself always looking at wikipedia. It contains most of the information I am looking for and is the fastest way to find it. I cannot tell how much of the information that I have read from these wiki sites is wrong, yet i find myself believing everything it says. Sometimes the information given fits the answer i am looking for and I end up being biased towards these articles. Even if something may be wrong, it supports my opinion and I end up not checking if it is true or not. The only times that students like me really check many sources to support all the information found is when a teacher asks him or her to do so.
We come to believe what is told to us in most frequency. If something is repeated over and over, even though it might not be true, we end up believing it. Once we believe this information to be true, we do not bother to look for other answers. There is so much information out there that people end up looking for the fastest answers and the easiest to find.
Jackeline Moreno
ReplyDeleteEnglish 1050-20
Assignment 1
I agree with Monica Hesse points about the people and their tendencies to regard most of the information they come across to be true. In my experience as a student, I found it was easiest and quickest to search for information on the web instead of at the library. Teachers who assigned research projects usually required at least two books as source and allowed one internet source from an edu website. It forced me to read a lot more information about the subject than I was looking for but now I can appreciate a library book. I used to believe most of what I read on a website if it sounded like it was written by someone educated. The pressure from my teachers to find credible sources definitely helped me become more aware of false information found in websites. Unfortunately true information is not the most accessible and it’s up to the person and his/her values whether he/she will make the effort t to seek it. I don’t think the web is causing this problem of lack of appreciation of knowledge and truth; I think it is the culture of this generation seems too lazy to be concerned. I like the internet and I think it very useful but if I really want to learn about something I’ll look for a good old fashion book.
Dan Lyons
ReplyDeleteEnglish 1050-20
Assignment 1
Most of things that are written in Monica Hesse's article I agree with, but I want to talk about one thing that I do not agree with, and that is her views on the reliability of Wikipedia. I use Wikipedia all the time, for possible every paper I wrote in high school and college so far I used Wikipedia and I had no problems whatsoever. I went to a very writing enriched high school and had a paper due every two weeks or so, and once again I never had a problem with inaccurate facts. I got pretty upset when I read all this bad mouthing of Wikipedia, I use it all the time and it has never let me down. I also went to Google and researched actually how inaccurate it is, and it has been proven that Wikipedia is just as accurate than the Britannica encyclopedia. This article does not change my mind about Wikipedia and I am not going to stop using it whatsoever. It is possibly the easiest place to get quick information and I am sorry Hesse, but very reliable information as well. I hope others know this too, because it really is the easiest way to get facts.
--I'm sorry about this being late by a day, I completely forgot about this posting and I wasn't in class Wednesday because I was sick--