Wikipedia and Google: Expanding Student's Knowledge

The class time spent on Google and Wikipedia was very insightful to me.  As a history major, I wish my professors would have known about these strategies.  This would have made research papers a lot easier.  Using these strategies to more deeply search Google is a very useful way to get students connected to the global community.  When we only expose our students to the information they are getting from a textbook, they develop a very narrow viewpoint about the world.  Through this opportunity of being able to explore information from around the world, students are able to develop the ability to understand, critically read and reiterate other points of view than their own.  This is an essential skill that our students need to develop, especially in a time where they have unlimited access to what is happening all around the world and in a time were the world is becoming very globalized.  
A great idea for using Wikipedia is having the students participating in editing articles.  It is important to have the students edit starting articles, not articles that are already graded as A, B, or C.  For example, if my third grade class is learning about natural disasters in science, at the end of the unit I could have my students search different Wikipedia articles about a variety of natural disasters.  If the articles are just starting out, a great assignment would be to have them individually edit an article for a writing assignment.

#Comments4kids link: https://kidblog.org/class/slc2017/posts?platform=hootsuite