How often have you heard the phrase "do not trust Wikipedia?" If you are like me, this phrase comes up every time you mention the sites name. This however, is poor judgement of the site. While I agree that caution needs to be exercised, I believe that Wikipedia is a lot safer to navigate once you understand the ins and outs of the program. For started, how many actually look at the rating of the site? I bet majority of the people do not even know that this is something that you can do. There is actually talk feature in the program that allows you to access the grade of the website and actually see if its credible or not. This is where this can get fun as a teacher. Imagine yourself as a history teacher and you see a website that is inaccurate and needs help (AKA a starter page). Instead of ignoring it, why not have students collaborate and fix the historical issues? This can be a great way to learn and improve one of the most widely accessed sites for knowledge ever. We often always take from the internet, but when do we ever add value back? This can be a great teaching experience. In addition, whenever we see a struggling site full of misconceptions (if there is one out there since the history ones are pretty spot on) students can learn from it by addressing biased opinions, which guess what! Is what good historians do anyways.
Another reason I would love to implement this is because far too often students put a lot of effort into their classes but leave with a notebook that they will never open again. And if you were a student like me, that notebook will just be tossed into a fire to roast marshmallows. Through the Wikipedia version, it will be something that they can access forever, and put it in their resume. This process requires attention to details, good writing, good editing and working in teams. To me, this is a great project!
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