Using Wikipedia in the Classroom

When I was student teaching, I can remember one of my student teaching cooperating teachers telling me about what a problem Wikipedia was with her students. She said all of them were using it and she was going to make a rule that it could not be used at all. When I asked her why, she told me because it wasn't accurate and that "most" of the information was wrong.

For a long time, I used this same mentality with my students as well. When I saw Wikipedia as a resource on a paper, I'd take points off. Now that I teach online, I see even more cases of students using Wikipedia. So, I decided to do a bit of research on the site myself to see if it was valid or not.

I've since realized that Wikipedia can be an extremely useful research tool for students. I advise them to use Wikipedia as a starting place for their papers- to use it to find additional sites or other points to research on a topic. I also found a very interesting way to use Wikipedia in the classroom that I thought I'd share with everyone. Many teachers have started using Wikipedia as a learning tool. They have their students research articles to find out if they are valid. Another teacher, who commented on this blog , had her students research their town history to add information to their Wikipedia article.

In fact, Wikipedia itself appears to be getting in on the trend of using their site in the classroom. The Wikipedia Signpost (which is a "community-written and community-edited newspaper, covering events and stories related to Wikipedia") has a great article about classroom ideas. You can read the article here. Enjoy!