I love Wikipedia and the collaborative approach to creation that it represents, but as with any information resource, Wikipedia is not all things to all people. One area where it is problematic for schools is that it contains some content that is not child appropriate. Also, as an “open environment” it is always changing…which is potentially both good and bad.

To address this, SOS Children and a group of dedicated volunteers have now launched Wikipedia for Schools. This is a subset of the best Wikipedia articles that are child-friendly and educationally-oriented and have been correlated to the UK National Curriculum. It is “frozen” so that vandalism, etc. are not concerns, and you can even download it as a DVD. What a great project!

With the increasing wealth of “copyleft” and Open Source content that’s out there, I’ve been thinking about a variety of potential projects like this. Examples include adapting Wiktionary for student use (especially on mobile devices), creating a CD of Open Source art, photos, video and music for student project creation, organizing a list of public domain ebooks by reading level, and more.

There is so much value in this content and providing it in a monitored, safe environment and format would help speed its adoption. It would definitely take a big group of volunteers to work on it though. Would free screened resources like this be of interest to your school? Would you be interested in helping put it together?

[Image of Wikipedia logo is a registered trademark of Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.]

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I had just presented a session at which I’d made the claim that textbooks aren’t very useful to most students today. (And I worked in textbook publishing for almost 10 years, so you can imagine how much it hurts me to say that.) On the other hand, my view on Wikipedia has shifted over the last year or so. I now think it is a pretty good resource.

Then on my way to work this morning, I heard a piece on NPR called “A Look at How the U.S. Understanding of its Own History Changes.” It traced the treatment of the Mexican-American war by textbooks over time. As you might imagine, it varied considerably. (Heck, we can’t even agree on the cause of the war we’re in right now.)

So, what does all this mean? Perhaps that no one source of information, including textbooks, should be considered to be “authoritative.” Some of the most important things we can teach kids in this age of information are to be critical information consumers, to use multiple sources, and not to treat anything as unquestional “fact.”

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The conversations about Wikipedia around schools range from schools who are banning it as a valid research resource to those to aren’t aware of how Wikipedia differs from other souces like Encyclopaedia Britannica or Encarta. (Many teachers seem to have picked up on the “free” part, but not the fact that it is editable by anyone.)

So, back to “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”…??? I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up I thought that encyclopedias were something created by really smart guys somewhere, not just anyone. As a result, my initial reaction to Wikipedia was skepticism.

However, research has shown that the accuracy of Wikipedia is comparable to mainstream sources such as Encyclopaedia Britannica. (This is the power of active wikis. More on that in a future post.) My own experience with Wikipedia is that it gives you everything that more traditional sources gives you plus a lot more.

The real point here that we as educators need to help our students understand is that no source of information is definitive. Every source has its strengths and weaknesses, its biases and perspectives.

When I use Wikipedia (or any other research resource, for that matter), I generally open it in one browser windows and another source in another window. (It’s sometimes amazing to find three or four different reputable resources with completely different portrayals of the “facts.”)

In the current days of the Internet, podcasts, wikis, and more new sources of information every day, we should all be critical consumers of information and use multiple sources. Given that, Wikipedia is usually on my list of sources to consult.

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