Lesson Ideas for Using Wikipdedia

WikiCriticalThink.ppt

Hold a mock trial with Wikipedia as the defendant.

• Determine the "crime" first by having the group generate a list of reasons why Wikipedia might be on trial.
• Students play the roles of prosecutors, defense attorneys, jury members, witnesses, and the judge. 
• Depending on the role played, each student would have a different mental process to work through.
• Resources:
  • The National Mock Trial Association - High School
  • Mock Trial on Wikipedia

Create an evaluation tool for examining the quality of a Wikipedia entry.

• The big question: What makes an entry a "quality" entry?
• Can the students locate existing tools that will help them?
• Each small group/individual student creates a preliminary tool, then come together as a whole team to merge the best ideas together to create one ideal tool that can be used by the class/group for the rest of the year.

Watch the Presidential race through the candidates' pages.

• How often do the pages change?
• Do the changes reflect current events? 
• What ethical responsibilities are involved?
• This could be a great exercise in social studies, political science, current events, critical literacy, math (charting changes), etc.
• Compare wiki page to candidate's official page (Prof. Hickey)

Hold a Socratic seminar with Wikipedia as the "text."

• The students take ownership in Socratic discussion, where the teacher poses thoughtful questions and then takes the role of observer, occasionally stepping in to redirect, pose a new question, or remind the discussants of the rules of conversation.

• Possible questions include:
  • How is Wikipedia an example of Collective Knowledge?
  • What qualifies a person as an "expert" - in Wikipedia and in life?
  • What hidden purposes might there be for putting information in Wikipedia? Are they ethical?

Determine if categories of knowledge are complete.

• Select a content area and go to the main page for that main domain, called a portal.  Look at the section on Categories.  Look at the levels within the Categories.  Often the super ordinate categories may be complete with all of the branches of knowledge within that domain, but then the subordinate categories are lacking or include miniscule items which should belong to a lower level of hierarchy.
• Tools to help organize thinking:
  • Text book table of contents
  • Encyclopedia Propaedia

• Example:

  •     Geography
  •     Science

Write an article for a topic that is missing.

• Great for content studies! 
• Use the stub guide for ideas on what information needs expansion.
• Use The Perfect Article guidelines for writing.
• The student becomes a contributor to the community at large, not just the classroom.  (Authentic learning!)
• Track peer review/expansion of the article. 

 Hold a debate on creating a school policy for or against the use of Wikipedia in school research.

• Students are given sides to debate. (Often the best learning in debate occurs when you have to defend a position that you personally don't hold.)
• Formal rules of debate apply. 
• Invite the principal, school board members, parents, etc. for a real audience. 
• Resources:
  • Debate Central for High Schoolers
  • Debate on Wikipedia

Develop of list of categories that Wikipedia articles would fall into regarding their purpose.

• After the class/group determines the general categories, they could then generate lists of characteristics and exemplars for each purpose.
• This is an important lesson in new literacies.

Determine which categories of knowledge are more difficult to build.  Why?

• The big questions:
  • Is knowledge stable? 
  • Is it ever immune from interpretation?
  • Why are some areas of knowledge more hotly contested than others?
  • Why does knowledge change?  
• Ask students to rank order the subtopics of a category of knowledge regarding level of difficulty/controversy
•  Ex: Geography

Determine the similarities and differences of a Wikipedia article and an encyclopedia article.

• Could do this in terms of a specific article or articles in general.
• How could we make this a higher level lesson?

 Look at the Discussion thread on a wikipedia entry and categorize the arguments

• What kind of argument is this?
  • passionate?
  • reasoned?
  • informed?
  • non-inclusive?
  • biased?
• What do you think about the arguments?
• How do arguments shape the entry?
• Why are people making these arguments?
• What is not included in this argument?