Introduction
Wikipedia blew conventional encyclopedias out of the water with its launch in 2001. I personally have jumped on the wiki bandwagon both in concept and in practice. This entry hopes to fulfill two purposes; first, to give some evidence for the credibility of wikipedia as a source, and second, to show how wikis can be used in the classroom.
Evidence of realiability
In 2005 the science magazine Nature performed a comparison between Encyclopedia Britannica's online entries and Wikipedia's entries (abstract here). Nature picked 50 topics within science and asked experts in the field to review and blindly compare the articles. These experts outlined the mistakes found in each article (a list can be found here). Overall results were that "Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries" (Giles, 2005).
Steve Jobs called Wikipedia one of the most accurate encyclopedias in the world (Richardson, 2010). The Denver Post had experts to review entries in their field of study, and four out of five found it to be accurate (Richardson, 2010). Halavais (2004) created errors on Wikipedia pages, all of which were fixed within hours. I had a personal friend who performed this same mini-experiment circa 2007, and he found the errors to be fixed within minutes.
The point is that the crowd is actually a knowledgeable and accurate source of information, provided the sample size (number of viewers and editors) is high. Most people would agree that even the 'unbiased' media has significant bias in what they choose to report as well as how the present it, making the read-write web an important place where one can read multiple viewpoints.
Classroom Use
I encourage my students to use Wikipedia as a quick reference for any kind of information as well as a start to general research about a topic. In any type of research paper multiple sources and viewpoints must be explored, so I don't see why Wikipedia can't be part of that variety.
I am more interested, however, in the use of Wikis for classroom creation and compilation of information. I use PBworks for my classroom wiki, which is used to compile, summarize, and comment on current research in Physics. Here are some links to screenshots of parts of my classroom wiki: Introduction Page, Class Page, A summary post, and comments on the summary post. I know that many teachers use Wikispaces, and there are other platform options as well.
I have generally been extremely impressed with the discussions my students have on their wiki page. I would like to expand the wiki in the future to include a comprehensive review/outline of course material for use studying for exams and the final, as well as for discussing and posting other information about Physics.
I believe that STEM education can benefit from the wiki particularly because of its collaborative nature, in that Science classes could communicate with Math classes, or any other combination of classes, to collect data, discuss analysis, design products or projects, or whatever else someone dreams up as a collaborative, interdisciplinary project.
Other examples of classroom wikis
Biology: http://mrsmaine.wikispaces.com/
An interdisiplinary, global collaboration project: http://flatclassroomproject.wikispaces.com/
Wiki as a study guide in economics: http://welkerswikinomics.wetpaint.com/
Sources
Giles, J. (2005). Special Report Internet Encyclopaedias go head to head. Nature, 438, 900-901.
Halavais, A. (2004, August 29). The Isuzu Experiment. Retrieved February 19, 2011 from http://alex.halavais.net/the-isuzu-experiment
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
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