Using Wikipedia for Writing Assignments

Wikipedia can be used as the source of writing assignments for classes you teach. In fact, students can write new articles or edit existing articles on Wikipedia as part of any class, be it language arts, history, economics, political science, biology, math, and at any level-elementary (there is no minimum age requirement for Wikipedia contributors), middle school, high school, college. What follows is a description of the nuts and bolts of Wikipedia and some basic preparation needed before you have students take the plunge into Wikipedia. In a subsequent article I will describe specific writing assignments I have used and plan to use that involve Wikipedia.

For those unfamiliar with Wikipedia, it is an online encyclopedia where anyone with access to the internet can write and edit its content. Speaking of which, the content of Wikipedia is available in over 100 languages. The English-language version of Wikipedia has over a million articles with more added daily.

Because of the open-source nature of Wikipedia, concerns abound about the accuracy, quality, validity, objectivity, and usefulness of Wikipedia content. These are valid concerns, so much so that some educators denounce Wikipedia and have instituted "Wikipedia bans" on students. What these educators may not realize, however, is that the very nature of Wikipedia makes it an excellent means for real-world writing as well as an excellent launching point for discussions with students about issues of accuracy quality, validity, objectivity, and usefulness. In short, Wikipedia can offer students opportunites to "write for real" and to engage in critical thinking, a couple of prime goals in education.

Preparation

What I did before I assigned students anything to do with Wikipedia was to tool around on Wikipedia to find out how it worked, specifically how to edit and create articles there. On one level, working with Wikipedia is quite simple. It really is a matter of accessing a Wikipedia article, clicking on the "edit this page" tab located at the top of the article and Voila!, let the editing begin. No, logging in to create a Wikipedia user account isn't required, but do know that [1] the IP address of the computer being used is logged (this is a way of ascertaining who is doing what as well as means of banning certain IPs for unscrupulous activity like inserting slanderous material), and [2] having a Wikipedia user account (free!) is required to write a new article.

Is there compensation for editing and writing for Wikipedia? No there isn't. Furthermore, there are no attributions (bylines) on Wikipedia articles. So with no pay and no notoriety for editing and writing on Wikipedia, it is natural to wonder why anyone would want to contribute to Wikipedia? That is a question that I haven't quite found the answer to yet, but what I do know that there are tons of articles on Wikipedia, a few of which I have edited or started.