I usually do not use Wikipedia for straight research. I tend to use it more for a quick reference on a subject, place, or person. I have used Wikipedia on a couple assignments where the teacher specifically told us to use the site. This was the only time that I used just Wikipedia as my main source.
The idea of letting students use Wikipedia as a source is a hard one. Since yes there is a great debate on how reliable the information is. Yet you still want your kids to be looking for the information. I would say 9 times out of 10 when you type in something specific into a search engine Wikipedia is going to be one of the results. I might let them use the information but it could not be their only source. I would probably have them use at least 5 Internet sources and some peer journal articles and books of course.
In today’s world you have so much information at your finger tips. You can pretty much find out about anything that you want. Some of the problems today is finding reliable sources. In my class students will have to have at least 5 web sources along with 2 book or peer reviewed journal articles for a research paper.
I would say, use it to find out in plain english what the subject is. You can also use it to get other references, as they are often in a hyperlink, and listed at the end of the article. I think it could be used as a great teaching tool, showing kids they have to use multiple resources to find the facts.
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