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My class are working on a bit of their Scotland topic researching cities. I had planned that they would use Wikipedia for research and was even thinking of using a wiki for presenting there results. Unfortunately we still have only one pc as the suite is still in progress. Anyway we had a look at Wikipedia with the projector and white board, compared it to our old classroom encyclopedia, hmm nothing on PSPs or IPods in the old book. We talked about who put Wikipedia together and how quickly it could change. We talked about accuracy and reliability of information. We had a quick look at the Tyrannosaurus page, and then the page about Glasgow. We had a quick chat about licensing and the fact that we could use the dinosaur photo if we liked. Covered a lot of points which will need further discussion and clarification.

Then I gave groups of children printouts of the Wikipedia pages about Scottish cities and highlighter pens, they went through the entries highlighting bits of text which will become note and then their own texts. Steam-powered Web2.0. good fun was had by all and the children ended up with some useful starters for their research. There should be a child’s eye view on the Sandaig Otters blog tomorrow.