Encyclopedias

The great debate of:  if, when, how, and where to use Wikipedia has been going on ever since its creation. I remember many of my teachers in high school banned the use of it. They preferred printed resources or electronic encyclopedias. On a similar note, one teacher during my practicum advocated for the use of Wikipedia as she saw it as more authentic and reliable than the traditional encyclopedias. Her thought was traditional encyclopedias are written by a select few, while Wikipedia is continually being edited by millions of users, so it should be more authentic. Much like what Aaron referred to as a "collective human brain" (June 26, 2011). Although I can see the justifications behind both these frames of minds, I do not fully agree with either of them. One thing is for sure though, Wikipedia is widely popular. Yes - even I use it for some things.

Hillary shared a very common experience, one I have encountered myself, one that I have discussed with my TL and one that was mentioned in Chris Harris' (2007) article Can We Make Peace with Wikipedia? Hillary states that she tried to keep her students away from Wikipedia by providing them with alternatives, but she often found them going directly for it anyways (June 19, 2011). My TL does not allow her students to use Wikipedia at all, as she feels the information is unreliable, however she still "catches" her students using it. One day she got frustrated and challenged the student to see if he could find the information using World Book, since he said he tried already and could not. She of course was right, he could; not necessarily the best way to promote the use of World Book to her students though. Harris states that by "continually bad-mouthing Wikipedia to the very people who use it successfully makes us look a bit daft" (p. 2).  So is there a middle ground? Harris also states that "it would be much more productive to teach colleagues, students, and parents how to best use Wikipedia... Librarians can foster educated, high-end users who verify Wikipedia entries using the history and discussion tabs" (p. 2). This is something I need to teach myself how to do first!

I agree with one point that Jennifer says that "Wikipedia offers a great starting point to discuss accuracy and authority as well as the need for several sources" (June 18, 2011). This is an entirely different information literacy lesson, apart from allowing students to begin their research for their projects and assignments using this resource. I do not agree with Chris in using Wikipedia as "a starting point for an inquiry" (June 19, 2011). True, Wikipedia does give a good overview of a topic, but so do many other resources that have authority. I would rather my students start with one of these resources and be assured they are accessing reliable information. They can then go back and use Wikipedia, if they chose. At this point the students will hopefully be better equipped with a general understanding of the topic in order to analyze and critic the validity of the information found on Wikipedia.

That all being said, I agree with Harris that Wikipedia should not be banned, but used as a research tool. I also agree that students need to be taught directly those information literacy skills required to verify Wikipedia sources. Because many of the students that I have encountered do not have these skills, some I have even found cutting and pasting Wikipedia entries into their own work, I would not feel comfortable allowing them to access Wikipedia as their starting point.  While it is still important to continue to teach the older students about verifying information, it may sometimes seem like a loosing battle, especially with less and less library time available to teach them. The TL at one of my schools is trying to battle this problem with teaching these skills early. Although she spends time teaching all grades information literacy, she spent a great deal of time this year with the grade two class. She wants to see if this will make a difference in the student's research skills by the time they are in the intermediate grades. Already she has noted some of them are more effective researchers, or at least make better reference choices, than many of the grade sevens.

In closing, one more thought to ponder...
I my experience with using Wikipedia for research is a lot of the content is directly cut and pasted from other sources; this I have found is usually the case in terms of academic entries. I have found that popular culture or current events entries contain more originality in their prose. The editors are more likely to write the entries themselves and cite their sources instead of cutting and pasting directly.


Works Cited:

Harris, Chris. "Can We Make Peace with Wikipedia?" School Library Journal 53.6 (2007): 26.