I found Wikipedia to be a great way to track current events...

The controversy with using Wikipedia in schools is the fact that everyone has the ability to be an editor. Anyone can publish, modify, and delete information. (Richardson 2010) It is simply online collaboration on a certain topic. In the past, I have used Wikipedia to find quick answers to questions that I have, mostly because it is one of the first websites that pop up in my Google search. Furthermore, I have used Wikipedia as a source for other sources. Using the links at the bottom I am often able to find additional sources which will often lead to even more sources! Oh the joys of the internet! I tell my students that they cannot use Wikipedia as a source, but I do allow them to use Wikipedia to find other sources since many have links to primary source documents.  In Hunt and Hunt (2006) I thought it was a great idea to go in and add or modify the Wikipedia pages as part of a classroom project. It provided the students with a purpose for their learning and gave them part ownership of the Wikipedia page. I think this would be really interesting to do in a Social Studies classroom as part of a research project. I was thinking that maybe the students could pick a topic in the curriculum and look for additional information to add to the Wikipedia page...I’d have to do more research on that idea first though because I can already think of some potential problems… 

My first experience publishing on a Wiki was for Tests and Measurements with Dr. Hardt. Knowing the rest of our classmates would be able to see the questions we created was a somewhat frightening thought at first, especially because Dr. Hardt wanted us to read our peers questions and offer constructive comments.  As the semester progressed I became used to the idea and because more willing to offer suggesting to my peers on questions. I found some of the comments from Wheeler, Yeomans & Wheeler (2008) were very similar to the discussions some of us has last semester.

So to learn more I started following a Wiki…

I have been following the 2011 Egyptian Protests on Wikipedia for the last week. My interest sparked initially because I was interested in learning about the cause of the protests in Egypt and I wanted to follow something that would be changing throughout the week. I think looking at the timeline of events is fascinating, and demonstrates just how quickly information can be posted and spread throughout the world. I found that this allows for a really great way to stay updated on the current happenings in Egypt and could be transferred to the classroom as a tool to track other current events. In regards to the timeline, it tracks the protests as well as the number of deaths that have occurred due to the protests. I was also able to learn about the bombing and burning of buildings throughout Egypt’s major cities. Moreover, I learned that the protestors and journalists are being arrested because the government is trying to silence them. The Wikipedia site also provided a number of links to outside sources including news articles and videos. So far there have been 305 308 331 353 355 citations for this wiki page. I used the slash through to demonstrate how my Wikipedia page has changed since Thursday February 3.

The significant number of online sources has caught worldwide attention to the Egyptian Protests even though the Egyptian government is working towards silencing the people. According to one Wikipedia source, Egypt has even been working to limit internet activity as an attempt to silence the people. I cannot imagine living with such an oppressive government. I wish I was teaching in a Social Studies classroom right now because this would be a great source for students to use to track the protests in Egypt. Students could find additional sources and add to the Wikipedia page. Moreover, I would love to use it to do a compare and contrast to other uprisings that have occurred throughout history.

In addition to news links, I found a number of sources to be linked to Twitter.   

“The White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs posted a statement on Twitter expressing concern "about violence in Egypt" and adding, "government must respect the rights of the Egyptian people & turn on social networking and the internet".^[43]”

Doesn’t this truly demonstrate the power the internet has?

Here is a link to the wiki incase you guys want to check it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Egyptian_protests