Everytime someone writes something about Wikipedia in a print newspaper you can be sure to read about it on every single one of the 8 billion blogs on the WWW. So at the risk of being just like everyone else, I’ll point you at Wikiality in My Classroom, in the Washington Post. Jacqueline Hicks Grazette, a teacher of American government, history and journalism at St. Albans High School paints an interesting picture of how she sees things.
She has some interesting things to say, like online “search engines may be taking a toll on students’ ability to take initiative and be resourceful problem solvers.”
“Are we creating a generation of kids who can neither formulate a research plan nor analyze their findings? Jumping from page to page and source to source for quick “fact bites” on the Internet may weaken a student’s ability to complete in-depth reading and carefully assess data, so important for critical thinking. As one student put it to me, “It’s very hard for me to read a book or a long news article.”
That might be true at lower levels
But surely as soon as you get to what? Upper years of High school in the US? GCSE level (non coursework) and A-levels and above in the UK you have to actually put effort in. You don’t just copy facts. You have to have explanations, you have to put reasoned discussions and foster debate. You can’t do that if you just rely on any source, whether it be Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica or the New York Times.
It’s the teachers responsibility to add this extra element. If this element is lacking from modern students then it’s a problem with the system not with the material the students are using.