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There I was, about to kick off my 7th grade unit on research and academic writing with a detailed discussion on epistemology and the history of knowledge as it relates to middle school term papers, when some innate teacher sense, (one not completely different from the convenient plot device that allows writers documenting the continuing adventures of Peter Parker to engage in a bit of very short term foreshadowing), tipped me off to the fact my students may not find this approach particularly engaging. Tossing aside my carefully planned approach to the unit, I threw my students onto Wikipedia. After all, I had no more lesson plans, and what harm could a bunch of 7th-10th graders do to an encyclopedia, anyway...
Should they one day make one of those uplifting teacher movies about this experience, they may describe the origin of this project that way, but in fact, I have thought long and hard about this. Here's a few of the reasons why I think teachers should use Wikipedia to teach middle and high school students about writing research papers.
Experience engaging in real copy-editing. Doing grammar and spelling worksheets are one thing. Actually engaging in improving the effectiveness of a living document is invaluable.
The ability to write an authentic document for a real audience.
A deep understanding of the difference between primary, secondary and tertiary sources. Telling them to never use an encyclopedia as a source for a serious research paper merely gives them an arbitrary rule to follow. Giving them an understanding of how knowledge is generated and transmitted helps them development better judgment about the quality of the information they are using.
Experience adapting writing to conform to a Manual of Style. Wikipedia's MoS is no more arbitrary than the APA or MLA format, but when students work to clean up an article and want to get it right, they actually come to like having guidance about how to make their article look like the rest of Wikipedia.
