Image: Wikipedia, First Edition
In the school library circles where I run, Wikipedia is a downright hot-button issue. Should students access it from school? Should teachers allow students to use it for school research projects? My take? A nice overview, but not an ending place – you gotta use a variety of sources.
Anyway, when I saw that artist Rob Matthews went and took all of Wikipedia’s featured articles (all 5000 pages worth) and created an actual book, my eyes said, “that’s pretty wild”.
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You know, you can break that into volumes:
(Thanks to BuzzFeed for the link)
Filed under: Articles
About Travis Jonker
Travis Jonker is an elementary school librarian in Michigan. He writes reviews (and the occasional article or two) for School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott committee. You can email Travis at scopenotes@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter: @100scopenotes.
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I do love that photo — thanks for posting that, Travis.
As for Wikipedia being a hot-button issue for school librarians, do you know if any have accepted the inevitability of students using Wikipedia as *a* source by encouraging student to create/edit entries on their own, either individually or as a group?
Encouraging students to see what’s involved in finding the right facts and distinguishing facts from “facts,” and to experience firsthand how the Wikipedia community self-monitors high-profile topics while letting errors stand in obscure ones, would seem to be an effective approach to sharpening students’ research skills — much more so than discouraging or prohibiting Wikipedia use altogether.
Chris – Nice to hear from you!
There are certainly plenty of teachers and librarians (or media specialists) that accept Wikipedia as a source. I know of some media specialists have put a link to the site on their school’s research webpage, accepting the inevitability that kids are going to go there.
I have also heard of college professors experimenting with student projects where creating and/or editing Wikipedia entries is part of the assignment. You can read about one here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/29/wikipedia
I think that’s a great idea, but probably more for the higher-ed crowd or possibly an advanced high school class. I’m with you that working to create or edit an entry would be a great exercise in seeing how the site functions, and more valuable than a lot of research projects going on.