Wikipedia Reflection

As an oldster, I’m just learning more modern methods of researching a topic. Wikipedia is a comparatively new tool for me. As I read Doug Johnson’s article, Wikipedia: Ban It or Boost It? (2006) I was comforted to learn that Wikipedia is growing in acceptance as a research tool. I had been uncertain, knowing that anyone can make entries in Wikipedia, if this was really considered a viable reference for scholarly papers. As I’ve learned to use search engines for researching various topics, I found Wikipedia references were nearly always in the top 5 hits and so I referenced Wikipedia, with some trepidation, on a few occasions, not really knowing if this was considered acceptable or regarded as a credible source.
Depending upon the topic, I found the encyclopedic format very useful as a starting point in order to garner an overview of a topic I had little or no knowledge about. I also found the references in the articles useful to find additional detail. I think students should be encouraged to use Wikipedia as long as they do some further research to deepen and embellish their understanding. As we’ve seen in other examples, sometimes information on websites is terribly biased, misleading, or outright false. Wikipedia seems to be accomplishing its stated goal of presenting neutral and unbiased information so if a source a student is thinking of using is contrary to information they find on Wikipedia, they should be suspicious and continue their search for more balanced and accurate information. Johnson supports this conclusion stating Wikipedia “should be used to get a general overview of a topic or put a topic in context, not be used as a sole and final authoritative source” (pg 27).
Internet research is important for efficiently gathering information from a multitude of sources and is a valuable tool for students. We need, howerer, to understand and teach how to validate information that is found on the web. Johnson recommends Kathy Schrock’s website (pg 27) for a useful tool to evaluate a web site’s validity. The guide by Roger Sevilla, (Sevilla, 2009) is another useful tool. Teachers and school districts must then establish policy for web site references to meet specific criteria for accuracy and credibility based upon validation guides such as these.