Using+WikiPedia+in+the+Classroom

Using Wikipedia in the Classroom
Jane's ideas (Students of NT, add your ideas to any of these pages) How I use Wikipedia. I use Wikipedia as a resource several times per day. In my doctoral classes I look up words and concepts the professor uses, I look up biographical information about important historical figures, researchers, cultural figures. At the dinner table when something comes up in family conversation we are just as likely to pick up a laptop and look it up in Wikipedia as we are to pull down the dictionary (and we do that a lot!).

1. As a resource for you. Look up words you hear in this class with which you are unfamiliar. [|Project based learning], [|wiki], [|blog], [|personal learning environment] all have useful entries in WikiP. Beginning a new unit in your class, look up the topic in WikiP to get some fresh ideas. Hear something in conversation that you are curious about? Look it up in WikiP.

2. With your students. > >
 * 1) Research in middle school and above. Encourage students to start their search at Wikipedia. You may or may not wish to allow students to source Wikipedia on a bibliography. I don't allow it for high school students - they shouldn't be referencing any encyclopedia. That means learners can get broad ideas from Wikipedia but they will have to confirm the "facts" from other sources that they can include in their bibliography.
 * 2) Research with youngers or struggling readers. Many of the articles in Wikipedia are written at an advanced level. Wikipedia text will be too complex for many of your students. But Wikipedia can be used to: a) talk about identifying resources that a student can read. b) explore the use the components of non-fiction even if the text is too hard - graphics, captions, headings, references.
 * 3) Digital citizenship. Wikipedia is the ultimate democratic resource.
 * The content was contributed, sourced, edited, critiqued, and policed by its users. What does it mean about the reliability of Wikipedia that anyone can edit it? What does it mean about their responsibility as readers of Wikipedia?
 * What are messages like the above all about? Who puts those within the articles?
 * Get a class account and update the entry for your town. Keep track during the year and see if it is changed. Is it improved? How do students feel about the changes?
 * Look at the discussion tab. What is it there for? What happens if there is a dispute about an entry? What does it tell you about the creation of entries?
 * Look at the history tab. What is it there for? (It shows the course of changes made to the entry. A feature of wiki software is that it is possible to compare versions and "roll back" to a previous state, if errors are found.) How does having the history affect the community of contributors and readers.