The answer is not to ban Wikipedia. The answer is to teach students how to use sources appropriately. Teach students to be informed consumers of information. Teach them how the encyclopedia ought to be used in academic writing, as well as how to use blogs, tweets and Facebook posts. Teach them not to feel safe anywhere when it comes to our high standards. Teaching information literacy will empower our students to navigate and benefit from the greatest technology of abundance the world has ever known.
Why Wikipedia Does Belong in the Classroom - This article is the rebuttal to a previous RWW article about why Wikipedia doesn’t belong in the classroom. Where do educators you know stand on Wikipedia? I remember in college that professors who did address it discouraged its use as a cited source, so most students facing this just went to the citations at the bottom of a Wikipedia article and used those as sources for papers (I assume this is still very much the case). I like the idea of the teachable moment about info literacy, whether you say yea or nay about classroom use. This is the world we live in, and evaluating sources of content is a key competency.
Source: readwriteweb.com
