Nutella oh sorry that’s my grocery list
a catalogue of food that I was going to
get yesterday well so much for that I
guess but what is a grocery list really
a written reminder for myself a lazy
introduction to a speech well yes and
yes
in actuality at its core a grocery list
is information I’d rather not bore you
with the definition of information
because quite frankly your lives as
students teachers or members of society
are fueled by it in lectures books or
media information lies at the center
point of our lives and is basically
inescapable now my talk today isn’t
necessarily about information itself but
rather a specific type of information
open source information if you’re a
programmer you should be quite familiar
with github or any other collaborative
version control system it’s a great
example of what it means to be open
source and is how I first learned of the
concept a few years ago in general terms
to call something open source means that
it’s sources open almost anyone can go
into the source material and make
changes to it so if you have an open
source book your friends can go and
write in new chapters or if you have an
open source a robot people can modify
its design in the previous example on
github developers from all around the
world can develop applications or
websites together this collaborative
level of access up benefits your book
can make a lot more interesting turns
with your friends unexpected additions
and someone with incredible making skill
might return a messy robot into
something worthy of a shelf at target
talent and perspective that differs from
your own brings out more interesting
outcomes to almost any endeavor this is
why authors have editors and teachers
encourage in-class discussion for
example however there are some downsides
unlimited editing powwow before you
panic as your friends start sneaking
embarrassing stories into your serious
novel or some overzealous teenagers
father words add some flamethrowers to
your gardening robot there are
limitations that can be added as
protection against this the easiest
example of this arises in Google Docs
when sharing a document to other people
you can grant them full editing
permissions only allow comments or just
offer viewing option actually we
accidentally centerpiece speech and mr.
Peterson this set of limitations is
nests
area to preserve the integrity of the
work you’re trying to accept changes to
if you don’t know you’re contributing
audience this distribution of
information is great for the general
population but what about a student can
students really benefit from up-to-date
unbiased information or more importantly
can they add to it well the first
question is too easy an answer so let’s
jump to the second what we’ve seen
situations where students had discovered
new things such as Matt dar debts talk
last year that’s not the type of
contribution I’m alluding to here yes
new information is certainly substantial
but what a student can mainly bring I
believe is their perspective perspective
can be shaped by a lot of situations
whether that be through a past
experience or a different way of
thinking and that’s what’s so great
about making knowledge modifiable by
students they can make knowledge
relevant and express it in terms of
their own lives this type of
contribution is best applied in a
classroom setting more and more teachers
at Pine Crest for example have been
engaging students in group discussion
collaborative activities and active
learning within the classroom these
approaches to education have been proven
time and time again to be a way of to be
the most effective way of retaining
knowledge so now that we’ve talked about
how the contributor benefits of open
source information let’s talk about the
information itself one of the greatest
sources from information on the web is
on Wikipedia
perfect timing in the early stages there
was a sense of caution around the
legitimacy of its content many times
people have defamed articles of humorous
replacements or downright hurtful
additions in some instances users have
contributed false information or
information with too strong of a bias
this led to some wariness of the concept
of having knowledge be open source we
weren’t just familiar with the concept
as we are today back then with
applications like crowdsourcing our
Kickstarter and traffic data from Google
Maps because back then we didn’t even
have smartphones so why should we trust
people with the on the internet with
access to information let alone the
ability to modify it well we’ve come a
long way since then undergoing a
paradigm shift in digital communication
the evolution of smartphones and social
media is a proverbial sneezing and Sami
Act to us at this point we’re sick and
tired of it so we’ve become more
accepting of information from someone
else’s fingertips that’s a title but the
information itself but has the
information itself become any more
reliable
actually yes researchers at the
Technische universität museum in
germany analyzed the accuracy of
pharmaceutical information in wikipedia
widely accepted textbooks of
pharmacology they found that and I quote
the overall completeness of drug
information in Wikipedia was eighty
three point eight plus or minus one
point five percent quite accurate if I
say so myself
now you might be sitting there and
thinking but if you had access to
academic textbooks why not just read the
academic textbooks well to that I
present another statistic from Benjamin
Hughes at out that Google and Wikipedia
are used by 80 percent and seventy
percent of physicians respectively so
this shows that even if students have
other traditional methods of gathering
information at their disposal or more
accurate ones the most accessible is
still through open source so what do we
make out of all this
or rather what will you make all this
because that’s the goal of open source
of the movement towards widely
accessible modifiable personal
information you can make this
information isn’t an abstract entity
lying in the ether between social media
and society it’s a solid concrete
foundation we build on one by one person
by person the information at someone
else’s fingertips pushing us towards a
future worth writing about thank you
[Applause] you