This workshop is about how to use and navigate wikipedia effectively in a way that is beneficial. So many teachers just make blanket statements about how wikipedia works and tell their students to absolutely never use wikipedia. Teachers tell students not to use wikipedia at a young age basically when students start doing research. Since students often come into the library to do research I thought it would be beneficial to break down some myths about wikipedia. This workshop will show teachers how they can incorporate wikipedia in their class and in the research process. 

 

Teacher’s will learn how wikipedia is run. Why it’s both reliable and unreliable, the pros and cons of wikipedia. Teachers will learn how to use wikipedia as a jumping off point to start the research projects. Teachers will be shown that students can find a topic or person of interest on wikipedia that can be used for research. Teachers will learn how to find actual reliable sources from wikipedia. They will do activities that they can later recreate for their class. One activity will be about fact checking wikipedia. Teacher’s will choose 5 facts from an article on wikipedia and then have to fact check them. Teacher’s will also learn how to add information to a wikipedia article. They can later have their students fact check on wikipedia or add information to a wikipedia article. Teacher’s will also watch a crash course video on using wikipedia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih4dY9i9JKE

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PD Slide Deck Link

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