Just read this article by David Nguyen of the Sacramento Bee: Wikipedia: It’s Free, but It’s Also Fallible and I think it’s very telling. For instance, he chose to ask a person who has never used Wikipedia to comment on it for this article – bad move. This is what fuels stereotypes and misconceptions about new tools. Reading further in the article, it seems the safe answer people default to is that “wikipedia is a nice starting point, but shouldn’t be accepted as a reference” or “make sure your students check the accuracy of what they find in wikipedia by comparing it to other sources”.

I have two questions about those statements:
1. If we’re so afraid of how wikipedia will be used in schools, doesn’t that make it look like teachers haven’t taught students how to be good researchers until now?
2. Shouldn’t someone mention that the other sources you might check wikipedia against aren’t necessarily more accurate?
I think I just did.