AndrewRT wrote: > I forgot to mention - I was speaking to someone at the Wikimedia > Seminar last Thursday and they mentioned that their sister is a > teacher (11-16yos) and often has problems with students using > Wikipedia inappropriately (in the sense of repeating things that > aren't true). She said it would be useful if we could put together a, > say, 5 page guide, on the best way to use Wikipedia. > > Does anyone know if there is anything similar already out there and > could anyone help out with putting something like this together? > > There are actually several issues. Two major ones are covered by "How Wikipedia Works", which is under the GFDL. Online you can find
http://howwikipediaworks.com/ch04.html: Chapter 4. Understanding and Evaluating an Article A number of reviewers singled out this chapter as containing original material about article evaluation, which is one topic a teacher would be interested in. http://howwikipediaworks.com/apb.html : Appendix B. Wikipedia for Teachers 1. Wikipedia as a Classroom Reference Resource 2. Guiding Student Use of Wikipedia 3. Assigning Wikipedia Editing More conventional things about citation, in particular. If a school student is misled by Wikipedia, there are of course several possible causes: Wikipedia is wrong; the student is misreading by being superficial about what is said, or is summarising inaccurately; or material is being taken out of context (for example neutrality being affected by selective quotation). It should be possible to hit the highlights over five pages. What would be really valuable would be to have some feedback, to have an idea how it goes with school students of various age groups (e.g. GCSE, A-level classes), and what the key points are for them. For 11 to 16, there should probably be plenty of emphasis on the presence and style of references, and accuracy in reading what is written; the language used is usually not pitched to the reading age at the lower end of that age group. Charles _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
