Guide for Teachers (Draft)

Preamble: Wikipedia and related sites are only a small corner of the World Wide Web, itself only part of the bigger "online world"; a world that is constantly being expanded by new communications technology. The role of Wikipedia in education has been hotly debated. This guide, aimed at teachers in secondary education, is produced by the UK chapter of the foundation behind Wikipedia. The intent is to demonstrate two points: first, that the proper use of Wikipedia as a resource can be taught in a practical way; and, just as important, a good understanding of the issues relating to an informed and critical use of Wikipedia are skills that can readily be applied to other online or in-print information sources.

Checklist of /major issues

• Unreliable information: discussion of sourcing and references.
• Time-critical information: discussion of article histories, blue-bar templates.
• Article versions and citation: discussion of permalinks.
• Citation style: Toolbox, "cite this page".
• Plagiarism: copy-and-paste into Wikipedia not generally allowed, out of Wikipedia is forbidden for most types of assessed work.
• Anonymity: Anonymous editing, pseudonymous editing, IP numbers (static and dynamic), privacy and safety.
• Patrolling and transparency: Wikipedia, unlike the Web in general, has constant monitoring of its content, and the ability to track edit histories in detail.

Templated messages on Wikipedia

• Coded by colours. What does the rainbow mean?
• NPOV. What is biased and unbiased writing like? What is meant by "tone"?
• Orange-bar templates and types of prose.
• Yellow-bar templates and basic problems with English, punctuation, format.

Article evaluation

• Five-point plan for evaluating a given article.
• Parts of an article: how to find the history, talk page tabs, how to find what links to an article in the sidebar.
• What do you look for in assessing an article? Clues and critical skills.

Search and research skills

• Different types of searching, variants, feeding back information gathered into searches.
• How do you combine online and book-based research?

Understanding the dynamics

• Life cycle of an article.
• Why do people edit the way they do? Vanity, fandom, POV pushing, activism, corporate interests, religion and politics, single-purpose accounts, ethnic tensions. Altruism. Homework.

Content policy - general themes

• Censorship
• Wikipedia is intended for adult readers
• Wikipedia versions for other readerships