“Don’t use Wikipedia!” my teachers said, “You don’t know who wrote it, they could be giving you incorrect information.” Still, it remains a very useful and often used resource. It’s more convenient than a print encyclopedia and is kept much more current. So what’s so terrible about it? Teachers point to the fact that it is crowd-sourced. This means that anyone, from an expert in the field to some bored internet wanderer, can create, write and edit articles. This means that the article about astrophysics could be written by an astrophysicist from MIT or some dude who really likes UFOs. This is the feature that many teachers point to as wikipedia’s downfall, but they seem to forget that anyone could include their students. Including students as authors on wikipedia turns the whole thing on its head.

Instead of passively using Wikipedia to easily gain information, they are producing information. This process can help them understand exactly why information found on wikipedia should be taken with a grain of salt. An article taken on as a class project allows opportunities for students to share information with a wide real-world audience, edit and critique each others work, understand the importance of citations, and take on responsibility for providing accurate information. This could work well in a variety of subjects since Wikipedia is not limited to a particular field. However, I think it is particularly useful in a world language or ESL class.

It can often be difficult to provide students in language classes real-world opportunities to use their new language skills. Wikipedia provides an easily accessible platform for students to interact both with the language and with speakers of that language. There are 280 different languages that have active Wikipedias. Many articles that appear in English don’t have counterparts in other languages. This provides and opportunity for students to share something new with that language community. Students can write about something from their own culture, their town, or something the class is interested in.

I had one of my classes in Japan write a Wikipedia article about their town as their last junior high English project. The whole project took four classes spread out over two months. In the first two classes the students explored the English version of Wikipedia and looked at the sections that were included in other articles. They decided which sections they wanted to include and assigned sections to students. The students wrote their sections as homework. The last two classes were devoted to editing and getting their work online. The class really enjoyed getting to see their final work in English online. When we started, an English Wikipedia search for “Irahara” brought up nothing and at the end they could pull up their article. For students who don’t have a lot of contact with the target language outside of the classroom, this can be a very powerful and motivating experience.

If we remember to take advantage of all of the features that different media offer, we can find a variety of ways to involve, motivate, and empower students.