Sam Weinburg is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University. He heads the Stanford History Education Group. This organization seeks to improve the teaching of history. It is currently focusing on helping students learn how to interpret online content.
Sam is the author of Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts and Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone). The former book won the Frederic W. Ness Award from the Association of American Colleges and Universities for work that significantly contributed to the “improvement of Liberal Education and understanding the Liberal Arts.”
In this podcast, Sam is going to teach you better ways to discern fact from fiction in online content by using simple and easy methods. According to Sam, “The real question is how to create an informed citizenry in an age when we meet the world through a screen. Figuring this out is neither a regulatory nor a technological challenge. It’s an educational one.”
I’m Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. And now, to help you become a more critical consumer of online information is Sam Wineburg.
This week’s question is:
Understanding factual knowledge and where it fits within a narrative is important. Narratives help us explain the world and give us context to history. Stories lodge facts into memory. #remarkablepeople Click To Tweet
Use the #remarkablepeople hashtag to join the conversation!
Sam is, unfortunately, woefully uninformed about the cliquish nature of Wikipedia. Yes, he’s correct about making a change to a page on a topic about “gun control”, but your change will ONLY be accepted if it agrees with the political leanings of the veteran Wikipedians that monitor that page regardless of what sources that are cited.
Wikipedia is one of the most biased sites on the net and blatantly so.
Sam Wineburg talks and talks!
I don’t agree with him that Wikipedia is factual all the time.
I can tell him of at least one case where it was very wrong
and I tried to correct it but I gave up in the end!
I could tell him the case in point if he cares to e-mail me at
sdhaddad@onemain.com
BTW, I am a Stanford Consulting Professor Emeritus.
Guy: you say your were on the board of trustees and I wonder if you have the time to look into this Wikipedia case?
On the other hand, I enjoyed listening to Wineburg ideas but I don’t necessarily agree with some.
Keep up the great work,
Sam Haddad