Weighing in on Wikipedia

As a high school teacher-librarian, teachers often ask me to give "the research talk" to their students at the start of a class project. They often add, at the end of this request, that I should "tell the kids about Wikipedia." By this, of course, most of them mean "tell the kids to not use Wikipedia." Some want it to be forbidden or ignored.

My research talk includes Wikipedia: it is often a valuable starting point for understanding, and often contains valuable references to primary information sources that it may have taken me longer to find in another way. Would I advise students to use a Wikipedia article itself as an authoritative source in academic research? Likely not. Would I tell them to not use the Wikipedia site at all? No.

Pat Jermy's short article, Weighing in on Wikipedia, is a good reminder of the basics regarding Web 2.0 research: check sources for bias and authority, be aware of editing threads and process, track down information origin, etc.

Bearing these basics in mind, I think that kids should actually be encouraged to use Wikipedia in school in order to develop and hone these crucial Web 2.0 skills. Teaching, instead of forbidding or ignoring, is what we're supposed to be all about...