Wikipedia in School - It Has Its Place

I know I already posted this week, but my brain is too tired to let me do any of the stuff on my to do list, and I need to distract myself from the fact that I really need to use the restroom but can't leave my room for the next ten minutes because there are study hall students in here.

Last week I wrote something on the board that I could not have imagine writing sixteen years ago because it didn't exist.  I would not have dreamed of writing it ten years ago because I hated it.  Here's a picture of what I wrote as bellwork for my physics class.

That's right.  I instructed my students to go to wikipedia!  You know what else?  It's not the first time.  Here's another thing.  It won't be the last.  I need some kind of support group.  Hi, my name is Beth, and I use wikipedia in my classes. 

If you were in my class ten years ago, you will probably be surprised to hear that I would not only allow students to go to wikipedia, much less instruct them to do so.  Back then, I could not have been more passionately against the use of wikipedia in my classroom.  When I assigned a project, the instructions specifically forbid the use of wikipedia.  When a goofy student was editting wikipedia in the computer lab, I asked other students if they really wanted Josh as their source.  Now, I am telling students to go read about mirrors there or posting links to it in my own digital book.

What has changed?  Wikipedia has changed.

In the beginning, the way wikipedia worked was extremely flawed.  Anyone could post anything, and it was a long time before it got reviewed.  Students would tell me back then that they took down wrong things, and I would point them back to Josh.  He had posted something about UFO's on a page about Abraham Lincoln, and it stayed for weeks before it was removed.  If something so obviously bogus was staying there, how long would it take them to catch more subtle errors? 

As wikipedia grew quickly, they set some policies that would allow them to maintain quality control.  They have a page on how to report edits and some extensive rules about what constitutes credible objections.  There is even a wikipedia page on the reliability of wikipedia.

One of the things that also turned me around was a Ted Talk by Jimmy Wales.  He discusses the community of people that do most of their contributions.  "These are people who write in encyclopedia in their free time for fun.  You think they don't care about accuracy?"  I found that a compelling argument.  It doesn't mean there aren't still people vandalizing the site intentionally, but that dropped pretty significantly when the novelty wore off.

Wikipedia isn't appropriate for everything.  It shouldn't be a source for formal research (you may remember that printed encyclopedias weren't for that either if you can remember back to those).  I wouldn't quote it in a valedictory address or an argument in court (although people have).  If you want to learn about the history of the dual nature of light, however, they have a great article that will give you an overall summary going all the way back to Democritus and Aristotle.  If you want to see ray diagrams for concave mirrors, there is nowhere better to find all you need to know in one place.  If you want to find a source that you can use in your research paper, scroll to the bottom of a wikipedia page for the list of works cited in that article; it's a great place to start looking for sources. 

If you teach kids to think critically, you need not fear wikipedia.  If you teach kids to confirm information in more than one place, you need not fear wikipedia.  If you teach kids to use wikipedia appropriately, you need not fear wikipedia.  Let's face it; it's not going anywhere.  Let's teach them to use it well.