The Global Village

In 2009 the HSC English course will include Wikipedia as a text. I think that this is an interesting turn in education - particularly as many schools ban wikipedia as a reference for assignments, etc. This is the first time that wikipedia has formally been included in a syllabus in Australia. It's fascinating to see a collaborative site formalised in the education system.

Clay Shirky reckons that society wastes huge amounts of the 'cognitive surplus' watching television - passively consuming other people's collaborative works.

"And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television."

I wonder if studying wikipedia as a text will encourage students (and teachers!) to take online collaborative projects more seriously, and to spend some time participating in them.