Wikipedia in the classroom?

Some people argue that Wikipedia should not be used as a reference due to the fact that the encyclopedia allows anybody to edit its pages According to what-is-what.com in 2005 the scientific publication Nature compared the accuracy of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica. It found that even though the amount of errors per article were the same, the “severity of errors in Wikipedia were worse. Encyclopedia Britannica suffered mostly from fact omission, whereas Wikipedia suffered from inaccurate information.”

However, David Perry writes: “It is irresponsible for educational institutions not to teach new knowledge technologies such as Wikipedia.” He continues this argument by saying.” Students and teachers alike must understand how systems of knowledge creation and archivization are changing. Encyclopedias are no longer static collections of facts and figures; they are living entities, and the new software changes the rules of expertise.”
He also states that Wikipedia is more current then traditional encyclopedias. To support this statement he sites Global Warming as an example of where Wikipedia is current and up to date.

David Perry also talks about the inaccuracies of Wikipedia, he states that “In many of these studies, Wikipedia fared equally as well as its competitors, with the added advantage of being able to correct its own errors and relish the fact that others could not do the same”


I agree with Perry that as Teacher-Librarians ”… we do a fundamental disservice to our students if we continue to propagate old methods of knowledge creation and archivization without also teaching them how these structures are changing, and, more importantly, how they will relate to knowledge creation and dissemination in a fundamentally different way.”

As educators we are to teach students how to use all resources available to them. As part of higher level thinking skills, we teach our students to check and question all resources be it print or electronic. We need to teach them the skills on how to make these judgments. Wikipedia can help us do this. As Badke suggests teachers can have students develop, enhance and expand a Wikipedia entry, and review Wikipedia entries and or compare Wikipedia entries with traditional or old literacy sources.
Last semester I collaborated with a Science teacher on a Land-Form Dictionary assignment that the students were to create. 90% of the students used Wikipedia as their one and only sources. Now that I have completed this lesson, I am going to work with the Science teacher to revamp our lessons. I will begin the assignment with an introduction to Wikipedia. In my introduction, I will have the student look at entry for our town. They can they decide if it is accurate or not. While evaluating the post, students will look at the history and discussion section of the post. Students will also be instructed to check the sources at the bottom of the article. I will instruct them that if an article is not sited, that they will not be able to use it as a source for their dictionaries. They will also be instructed to check the age of the article. Would they use a book that was out of date? If not, then why use a post that is out of date?
My hope would be to have the students edit the post to see how easy it is to do this, however, this is not a possibility in my school. As mentioned in a previous post in my blog, Wikipedia edits are not allowed on our computers. Therefore, I might assign this as a homework assignment. I would first have to make sure that all students have internet access at home. The students could email or print a copy of the original post and the edited post. We could review these as a class. In the case that everyone does not have internet access at home, which is a possibility with my students, non-internet people could be partnered up with internet people to discuss the process. After partner and/or group discussions we would have a group discussion about what students did and then the necessity of evaluating and comparing sources. Another option would be if students have high speed internet at home to have them screenshot the before and after Wikipedia posts, similar to what people have done in this course. This is one example how Wikipedia lessons can be taught in schools.
In reply to Perry’s article Kelly wrote “Asking/telling students they are to not use a source of information does not mean that they don’t, it only means that they will not disclose it in their references.” How true, and what has the students learned? Badke says,” Academia