WIKIPedia

WIKIPedia is a global multi-lingual encyclopaedia that is produced by largely anonymous and unpaid contributors on the Internet. WIKIPedia pages can be edited and modified in a collaborative effort, since the format of this encyclopaedia is a WIKI, which is used as a device for pooling and modifying knowledge between multiple users.

Because I am studying for Primary School teaching, I chose a topic to research in WIKIPedia that I believed would greatly advantage most students, and that is Literacy. Immediately, a definition was given to me, with the warning underneath that 'the article's introduction section may not adequately summarize its contents.' Being a collaborative venture, there will always be the chance of misinformation or 'vandalism' on WIKIPedia pages, but there are discussion notes on the pages with warnings as to what seems to be reliable information and what is not.

This last point seems to me to be more an advatage than a disadvantage of WIKIPedia. How many other poublished texts offer so many differing perspectives on a topic, which makes for an unbiased explanation. For example, I looked into their listing for The Vietnam War, and found that they offered other names that the war was known by, including The American War. There aren't too many textbooks written by Americans that would suggest such a thing (they would suggest that a reference to The American War smacks of bloody communism, probably [I'm being tongue-in-cheek here, really!]).

Back to Literacy, where the initial information covered a few pages, but as well as these, there were links to further resources along the way. Here are a few that I looked at:

National Council of Teachers of English

International Reading Association

Critical Literacy

The International Statistical Literacy Project

So even in a few short minutes I had a list of resources to further my investigation into the topic, and by copying and pasting the RSS feeds, can now access these at the click of a button. A teacher can easily make these links available to students on a Class Blog, so that they can research a topic from home. It means that you decide which links are appropriate (except for the more experimental of them, who will go above and beyond the information you have presented to them) and it is more exciting homework to watch a video on the Viet Cong rather than read some paragraphs in a dusty old textbook, that will probably not be opened until five minutes before class the next day.

So, WIKIPedia can be very engaging. Much of the vocabulary is highly technical, so for younger year levels it will be a more appropriate resource for the teacher as opposed to the learners, but it is definitely full of interesting, relevant information that has passed the test of WIKI adjudicators and contributors.