Impact of Social Media on Institutions

Impact of Social Media on Institutions

Wikipedia - A Blessing or a curse? Is it Reliable

There have been discussions on the reliability of articles, documents, researches and biographies on the source of Wikipedia. The papers presented on this site can be edited with additional information or the non-authentic information. For such reasons, the questions for its authenticity arise about the papers Wikipedia produces. Wikipedia is the world's leading resource for references containing 22 million articles in about 285 languages out which there are about 4 million English articles.

As an open source encyclopedia, there are thousands of authors who tend to agree, disagree, comment or debate and even fiddle with the source by editing or replacing. To ensure reliability Wikipedia relies on 13000 volunteers who are experts in related fields that contribute by editing the previously submitted papers. A study was conducted in order to test the reliability of the Wikipedia. Besides, the analysis identified several errors regarding interpretation, omissions, factual errors and misleading statements. Wikipedia survived the study analysis, welcomed by the founder of the origin Jimmy Wales who further said,” We're hoping it will focus people's attention on the overall level of our work, which is pretty good.” After such comments, the Wikipedia can be considered as an initial study source. To ensure further accuracy and reliability, one must refer to the citations or bibliographical section of the webpage which is at the end (BBC News, 2005).

Accessing social networking sites in educational institutions

While the social networking sites like facebook, twitter, youtube and myspace provides with benefits and convenience for educational purposes. There is also claimed that these sites may disengage students from learning literacy and traditional skills. Furthermore, the issues have been identified regarding fear of privacy which may impact negatively the traditional role of the learner and the teacher. Due to such reasons these sites at some institutions are prohibited , and some take beneficial advantage of such sites.

The advancement of technology has reformed the structure of the traditional education system. There is increase in usage of social networking sites which provides connectivity with the most recent publications. Furthermore, it extended the typical classroom structure with exciting and enthusiastic educational system which allows teachers and students join groups, follow updates and can get educational assistance (Pollara, P. & Zhu, J.2011).

In my opinion if this system is supported and promoted then it ...