Wikipedia: Genuine Audience and Collaborative Writing

There are few things as valuable to budding writers (or as scarce) as a genuine audience. By "genuine audience" I mean somebody who wants to read their writing and will make use of what they read in some way (discuss it, use it to make an informed decision, etc.). Experts agree that the opportunity to share their writing in an authentic way encourages and engages them in the writing process.

Another important, but difficult, concept to convey to students is that knowledge is ephemeral. As Tommy Lee Jones'Agent K put it so wryly in Men in Black," 1500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the Universe. 500 years ago everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow." Students often seem to think that the collective knowledge of mankind spurt out of a fountain at a university, in a laboratory, or somewhere on the East Coast, and was then placed into textbooks and shipped to them. In some ways, I think access to the Internet and a renewed focus on open-ended questions and inquiry based methods has helped students understand where "knowledge" comes from. Still, they need to recognize that what we believe and know is based on research and that it changes from time to time. This problem goes hand-in-hand with students sometimes struggling to see the value of citations and identifying sources.

Lastly, I want my students to know their writing an always be improved. It's wonderful when a student completes two or three drafts before they turn it in, and I'm not trying to foster self-deprecation, but they should understand that good writing often goes through dozens of edits with massive amounts of text added, removed, or relocated! Even after all of that there's probably some way to make it better, but you can't spend your whole life on a three-page essay.

How will we solve all of these problems? Wikipedia! No, we're not going to look up the answer on Wikipedia; we're going to research topics and improve the World's Largest Encyclopedia. There are Wikipedia pages waiting to be created, edited and improved covering every topic imaginable, from military vehicles to little-known waterfalls. 

Let's start with how to edit a Wikipedia page. You don't need to be signed-in as a member to edit Wikipedia, but it might be a good idea because it often speeds up the time from when one edits and submits to when the changes appear. It also allows students to receive some recognition for their efforts (albeit, fairly anonymous). To create an account, click the link or go to Wikipedia and look for the "create account" link in the upper right hand corner. Once you've clicked it you'll be asked for basic information (username, email, password preference) and proof that you're not a robot. If you have each student create their own account (for grading or organizational purposes), my suggestion would be to make your student username's fairly anonymous. It might be a good idea to give students a format for their username, such as Teacher's Last Name/Hour#/Initials. Thus, Jane Doe from my second hour class would be Stewart2JD. As for passwords, check with your technology department to see if they want you reusing your school password outside the school's network. 

First-time editors and those new to the Wikipedia culture might want to visit the Teahouse at Wikipedia. This is a place to ask questions (formatting, content, culture, or anything else you want to know) and receive answers from experienced editors and contributors. Remember, Wikipedia has its own Manual of Style and this should be consulted regularly to ensure content alignment. Many of the rules are quite nuanced and designed to make Wikipedia professional sounding and culturally sensitive, but there are some important rules that should be considered by all contributors. One of the most important is images. They must be in the public domain through a Creative Commons license or by some other means. Googling "Khwai River" and inserting it into a document is always unacceptable, but it's particularly bad form on a website like Wikipedia. It might be a good idea to review major guidelines with students and help acquaint them with the Manual so they can find their own information.

Now that students know how to write a Wikipedia article, it's time to find articles in need of improvement. Wikipedia identifies approved topics in need of additional information as "stubs," and they have a massive index of these stubs, organized by subject. Perhaps you want your students to work on a particular topic, such as the physical geography of Africa. If that's the case, navigate through the index to find waterfalls, rivers, forests and oases of Africa. Keep in mind that there's a reason these articles are stubs and it might be difficult to find information. My advice would be to keep the topic as general as possible, while still addressing your learning standards. If it's Social Studies and they're supposed to understand how systems of trade develop ask the students to find a stub related to trade, commerce, currency or another pre-approved topic. If it's Language Arts and you just want the students to write for a real audience, or get practice doing research, have them write about a local topic, like the local county park or a hometown hero.

The difficult part would seem to be assessing, but if you have the students complete their article or contribution on a separate document, like Google Documents, then you can grade their writing and facts. They can post to Wikipedia, share the link with their classmates, via Remind101 or Padlet, and look at each others' work. Of course, the learning isn't over when they've finished posting and reading the articles. Encourage students to revisit the page and see how it changes over time. It's almost guaranteed others will visit the page and make minor, or major, changes to the article.

*A final bonus for using Wikipedia is it helps students understand the fallibility of sources, especially ones that allow non-experts to contribute. (Personally, I think Wikipedia gets a bad wrap. It shouldn't be used for dissertations and there are definitely better websites out there for conducting research. However, too many grade-school teachers treat Wikipedia like a gateway drug to illiteracy and the decline of modern civilization. If anything, Wikipedia is bringing literacy and knowledge to billions of people and is the preeminent example of a future in which knowledge becomes egalitarian and accessible to all. But that's just my opinion!)

I would love hear your thoughts or see some links to pages your students edited!