Gretchen,+Erica,+Sara,+Kellie

== =​= =Wikipedia as an Educational Resource =

**According to wikipedia.org...**
Wikipedia is a free [|encyclopedia], written [|collaboratively] by [|the people who use it]. A [|wiki]. is a special type of website designed to make collaboration easy. Many people are constantly improving Wikipedia, making thousands of changes per hour. All of these changes are recorded in [|article histories] and recent changes. For a more detailed account of the project, see ** [|About Wikipedia] **.

As an educational resource, wikipedia has many strengths and weaknesses. In the **strengths** column of the chart below, we highlight the reasons why we believe it is OK for students to __START__ research projects with wikipedia. In the **weaknesses** column of the chart below, we highlight the reasons why we believe students should not use wikipedia as a sole or main source of information for research projects.


 * ** STRENGTHS ​** || ** WEAKNESSES ** ||
 * Wikipedia entries are current because they are updated thousands of times an hour. (Traditional encyclopedias might be revised annually.) || Some entries are added by people who really have no knowledge of the subject. Their entries are not factual. ||
 * Wikipedia's [|neutral point of view] policy makes it an excellent place to gain a quick understanding of controversial topics. || Some people add biased content, and their work is not always edited away quickly. ||
 * Many very smart, educated people add content to the entries. || Some vandals frequent the site, and their work is not always removed quickly. ||
 * A student can click on links that will take him/her to other sources of reliable information about his/her topic. || Some links lead to questionable sources of information. ||
 * A student can develop his/her critical thinking skills by taking the information provied by Wikipedia and deciding if the information is valid. || There are better sources in the academic community to choose from. ||

Trusting Wikipedia!
-Assume people are [|helping] with editing and adding information -People are not trying to hurt, but to share knowledge -Many ways to resolve disputes of facts through [|diffs] -There are civil ways to deal with people who may breach policies with the help of the [|administrators] -If a new person contributes and accidently adds a flaw or typo, you may help correct it by editing rather than start hostile environments -People sharing and editing is a positive way of contributing to topics, there are many ways to [|keep peace] and help rather than having bad faith

[] (picture source)

Click the link below to further investigate the use of Wikipedia in the classroom.