Wikipedia: Friend Not Foe

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/archival/EnglishJournalArticle2.pdf

3 things I learned:

• wikipedia has tutorials for prospective editors on structure, format, and style
• there is a discussion forum for each article that encourages debates about editorial choices
• footnotes provide commentary along with the citations

2 things that surprised me:

• i never thought about the idea of looking through encyclopedias for gaps where new research might be possible.
  
• articles are ranked based upon certain criteria. less than 2,000 articles have achieved the highest honor of "featured articles"

1 question I have:

• why do teachers automatically write off anything new instead of trying to discover ways of using new material and technology to encourage critical thinking and judgement.