What? Wikipedia In History Class?

I have always been told Wikipedia is not a reliable source. I was never permitted to use it in college while I was conducting research for any of my history classes, and I can understand why. Pretty much any human being could write something for that website, and who would know if it was really true or not. With myself being the history fan that I am I would want to make sure things I am studying are reliable sources of information. One of the first things I remember learning when it came to researching information online was what sites to trust, and which ones not to. Often any sites ending in .com where not as reliable. The safer internet sites for information ended in .org, .edu or .gov. So when I am coming up with ways to teach high school students about how to conduct research one of the first things I wold tell them was to use safe sites, and not to use Wikipedia. This article What? Wikipedia In History Class? may have changed my views on wikipedia.   

In this article the author explains how he uses Wikipedia to teach his high school students about conducting research. In the process of the article he also explains Wikipedia and how it works, and made me realize it isn't the easiest thing to do in terms of publishing something on Wikipedia. The site has a lot of administrators and monitors that will delete your contribution, article, or corrections if it is deemed incorrect. This was one of the more fun parts of the lesson the author discussed. His students would choose a topic to research, which would have to be approved by the teacher, and would need be on a topic that Wikipedia had little on. Once the students had their topic they would then conduct the research and write their own article and place it onto the Wikipedia site, or correct an existing one. Once they published it, the students would have to monitor the site to see if the post would be flagged or deleted. If it was flagged then the students would have to collaborate with the administrators to plead their case as to why it would stay.

I think this is a phenomenal teaching tool, because it combines so many aspects of learning. It teachers students how to conduct research, and how to write a good research paper. It teaches those students how to properly site those sources, and it teaches them how to collaborate online with administrators of the site, and other Wikipedia contributors. This lesson also gives students a good idea of the type of information that is on Wikipedia and lets them decide for themselves whether it is a site they would want to use in the future for reliable information. I think this is a very cool lesson, because it would hopefully excite the kids even more knowing that the work they put in to this research could pay off by having their work actually appear on a website for the whole world to read.

This lesson was a very complex lesson with many steps needed to ensure it levels of success. It would be too much to explain them all here, so I encourage all to click on the above link and read the article for themselves. With the complexities of this lesson, I would definitely consider this for my classroom, and think it would be fun and exciting for myself and the students to take part in.