Wary of Wikipedia

Teachers who are concerned by student use of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, may have found an unlikely ally in the resource’s founder. “I think that [Wikipedia] is a tool students should be using—but with some awareness of what it is,” says Jimmy Wales, founder and CEO of the nonprofit Wikipedia. “It’s really not aimed at children.”

The online reference, whose software allows anyone to post an entry or add to an existing file, boasts more than 714,000 entries in English alone. However, the popular site has fallen prey to vandalism, including the mischievous switch this spring of Pope Benedict’s photo with that of the evil Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars. While Wikipedia already has the capacity to temporarily lock certain sites, preventing users from making changes, Wales says he is changing its software, adding time delays to protect the entries from errors or vandalism.

The fluid nature of Wikipedia’s content has led educators and others to question the resource’s accuracy. Still others believe that the site’s dynamic nature makes it an ideal teaching tool, allowing students to compare Wikipedia entries to those found in standard references. “I think Wikipedia has enormous potential in the classroom as long as teachers understand the content is always in flux,” says Andy Carvin, director of the Digital Divide Network. Wales says that Wikipedia has some young contributors. However, he says, “We do not strongly encourage teachers to suggest their students to post to the site. It’s meant more for advanced high school students and higher.”