Wikipedia For Kids -- Teaching a Love of Learning, and of Sharing Knowledge
When I first introduced my daughter to Wikipedia, she was in middle school. She used it as one of her sources for a project on the Oregon Trail. But she went a step further. She set up a Wikipedia account and corrected an error in the entry. Every since then she makes it a regular part of her research. Using it as one of many sources, and updating it when she's done. What better lesson to our kids (and what better motivator), than learning that knowledge isn't just for school, it's for sharing and teaching as well?
Updated: Feb 27, 2008 to add:
FWIW. Here's my daughter's Oregon Trail "Brochure". 4MB PDF.
There are a few precautions you must take to travel
the Oregon Trail. But when you get to your lovely
destination, the river crossings, exhaustion,
accidents, bad weather, cholera, indian
attacks, starvation, stampedes, rattle
snakes, dysentery, scorpions, bandits
and broken-down wagons will all be
behind you.
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When I was that age, I'd go to the library and make heavy use of the encyclopedia. When I got to high school, I started to branch out into secondary sources, i.e., books and magazines. In college, I sought out primary sources.
The difference between Wikipedia and an encyclopdia is authorship and accountability.
World Book and Britannica aren't error-free, but there is a publisher with a track record, a sense of responsibility, and unified standards. Wikipedia, on the other hand, is edited and administered primarily by children (under 18 years of age) and near-children (between 18 and 25) who are guided by a conflicting, contradictory, and ultimately chaotic set of rules.
On any controversial topic, and even on a fair number of surprisingly non-controversial topics, Wikipedia is prone to inaccuracies, some of them quite significant. Your daughter caught one of them, which is a feather in her cap.
So long as she remembers that Wikipedia doesn't carry the same level of authority or credibility as other encyclopedic sources, she's fine. The risk is that she and others will place too much trust in that source, simply because a lot of people use it.