CrusaderBlogs.org

I have heard many at teachers question the value and integrity of Wikipedia.  Depending on the source you go to, independent studies have found Wikipedia to be 80-90 percent accurate.  When we look at our students and they as individuals get 80-90 percent of the questions correct on a test, we praise them.  Then as teachers we help them find and fix what was incorrect.  How often do we really throw out something that is by majority still good?  Why don’t we do the same with Wikipedia? At our school we have been talking about digital literacy and how important it is to teach our students critical thinking.  Is Wikipedia not the perfect place to do this?  In our classrooms we must be teaching our students to question.

Questioning is central to learning and growing.

-Jamie McKenzie

When our students write for us we always tell them to cite their sources.  Wikipedia tells their authors the same thing.  Any article is only as good as the sources of information that it is built upon.  It does not matter if it comes from Wikipedia, someone’s blog, or a scholarly article, students should be encouraged to question it.

I would encourage all of us to use Wikipedia as a place for information.  As always we need to be asking, where did this information come from?  When students run across incorrect information, what a powerful teaching moment that we have.  Teach them how to FIX the error and how to cite the source of their information.  We need not ban what can be argued as the largest single repository of information, but we must use it wisely.

As for the question should students site Wikipedia in their formal research, I would have to defer to the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, for that answer.  He was quoted in The Chronicle of Higher Education as saying, “For [goodness] sake, you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia.”

John Laufer sent me this resource today that is built by Center for History and New Media and American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning.  They have set up a digital archive of electronic media about the 9-11 tragedy.  The website presents several different points of view and 1st person experiences around the 9-11 attacks.  They also allow visitors to contribute any type of digital media that documents the history of September 11 and its aftermath.  The email states the archive contains more than 150,000 digital items, a tally that includes more than 40,000 emails and other electronic communications, more than 40,000 first-hand stories, and more than 15,000 digital images.  As this years seniors were only in th 5th grade in 2001, this appears to be a collection worth looking at with our students as we remember this day in American History.

This is the official blog portal for Faith Lutheran Jr/Sr High School.  I am excited to provide teachers this venue to blog with their students.  Blogging can be and is a powerful tool to increase communication and collaboration with the students, their homes, and the rest of the world.  Use the link above to sign up as we embark on this journey together.