Commentary: June 2007 Archives

What more do you need to know about Wikipedia? It’s the sometimes controversial online encyclopedia of the people, and its content dwarfs that of conventional encyclopedias. What we also know is that college students all too often rely on Wikipedia entries without fully evaluating the accuracy of the content. Then perhaps there is something new to learn – how to leverage Wikipedia as an instructional technology to better equip students to read and gather information with a critical eye.

To help educators and librarians to better understand the issues related to the use of Wikipedia by students, EDUCAUSE has focused the latest addition to the "Seven Things You Should Know" series on Wikipedia (pdf). The series introduces web and learning technologies and identifies how they might be best used for better pedagogy. The new Wikipedia document identifies how it can be used in this way:

In higher education, wikis have been put to use in courses ranging from humanities to science to business. With Wikipedia, students can take part in a collaborative process of creating and revising content in a global context, moving the opportunities for learning beyond the walls of the classroom or the university. An important part of academic training is seeing how knowledge is created and understanding that it is dynamic, evolving over time based on the contributions of many individuals.

Rather than banning the use of Wikipedia, faculty and librarians are working together to develop creative assignments and research exercises that engage students in the information creation process by having them create or edit Wikipedia pages. Through these learning experiences students come to understand that anyone can add to or edit Wikipedia and what the consequences are for those who base important decisions on this information. Faculty who would like to further explore how Wikipedia can be used to help students become more effective researchers should contact their Temple University Libraries subject specialist to begin the discussion.

-Steven Bell

I've always thought the idea of pilgrimage fascinating, as have many many others, since pilgrimage happens in a lot of religions and cultures. There's even a two volume encyclopedia called Pilgrimage: from the Ganges to Graceland and many books. If you do a search in GVRL, you can find articles on pilgrimage in Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism, spanning most of the globe, even in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. And it's been going on for a long time, back to the ancient world. In literature, think of Canterbury Tales and Pilgrim's Progress. Contemporary pilgrimage destinations that have ancient origins include Jerusalem, Mecca, Mount Shan (China), and the Ganges.

What I always associate with pilgrimage, sort of a romantic notion perhaps, is a spiritual / psychological transformation that takes place when you leave everything behind. It's easier to change when your personal geography is changing every day. The physical and psychological sort of merge. It has quite an allure. Of course there's always that reaching your destination and getting back part that can be problematic. (But I'm probably confusing a pilgrimage with an escape.) Here's a nice overview article from the Encyclopedia of Religion on pilgrimage. Here's an article on Sacred Places from the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Catholic Church defines pilgrimage as "generally a journey to a holy place undertaken from motives of devotion in order to obtain supernatural help or as an act of penance or thanksgiving." I'll bet that definition works for many religious traditions. But I don't think pilgrimage needs to be thought of as strictly a religious phenomenon. Think of Homer's Odyssey, when Odysseus was set upon by fate and the gods on his homeward journey to Ithaca. Or think of Aeneas, fleeing from the carnage of Odysseus and the Greeks to found the city of Rome. Why did the ancients find journeys so fascinating? Or think of the pilgrims of England journeying from the "civilized" to the raw, innocent, and "primitive". Richard Slotkin has written some interesting stuff about this. Or think of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, or Sheen in Apocalypse Now (or Brando, who could forget that?), or 2001: A Space Odyssey with Hal, Dave, and Frank.

Finally, I recently heard about two fascinating books by Jonathan Shay, a psychiatrist who has worked with a lot of Vietnam veterans. The first is called Achilles in Vietnam, the second Odysseus in America. He uses the Iliad and the Odyssey to explain the journey of the soldier, first in the horror of combat and then on the long road home. It's not easy.

---Fred Rowland