[Year 12 IT Apps] Accuracy of Wikipedia

[Pearse, Steven S]

We had the cyber-safety lecture today (from the government) regarding things that we are(or should be) aware of, so I won't bring it up here. What did bring my attention was a story that was told that I found amusing, possible but unlikely. It goes as follows.

A teacher asked her students to complete a research assignment on something historical on a Monday and asked the students to hand it in on Friday. In that particular class there was  a student that was very diligent, completed work on time etc etc. He finished the assignment by C+P (or using it for research) the wiki page and handing it in on the Tuesday. The student then proceeded to change the wiki page and a large amount of the students used this information to create their assignments and handed in work with bogus content. This information stayed on there until the teacher looked on Friday and the student confessed to what he had done.

All the teachers in our staffroom laughed quite rightly, but then I started thinking - where did she hear that story from? I didn't stop to ask, but I have my doubts about the accuracy. I also have heard my students being told by other teachers not to use Wikipedia at all as its information is not reliable. I did some snooping around (albeit briefly) and found that it has been likened to Encyclopædia Britannica in terms of accuracy. Most bogus things are found and deleted very quickly.
Personally I have found it to be very accurate when I cross check it with other sources, and think that is it getting a lot of bad press.

I would welcome other people's thoughts on this matter.. Do you instruct your students to avoid Wikipedia?

(Also - the "Wikipedia is a starting point was my advice")
(FYI - although I understand the irony of adding a wiki reliability page that is a Wikipedia page :) )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia


Steve Pearse

Narre Warren P-12

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