1. Validity and reliability of information on the Internet:
Teacher demonstration: Wikipedia
A curriculum for critical thinking and web research This plan is part of a
critical thinking and web
Skill level: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced
research curriculum
School level: Middle school (11–13 years old) developed by the International
High school (14–18 years old) Society for Technology in Education
(ISTE) and Microsoft.
Wikipedia overview www.microsoft.com/ education/criticalthinking
Wikipedia is a web-based, community-written
encyclopedia. It attempts to collect the “wisdom of crowds” by providing an always-editable
resource. Anyone with information or expertise can contribute to articles to help keep them
up to date and information rich. The benefit of a tool like Wikipedia is that its contents are
not developed by a single author or set of authors. In addition, there is no “final publication
date,” thus helping to ensure that information is continuously updated. The challenge, at
least from a classroom point of view, is that visitors to Wikipedia (or any other online source
of information) must take into account the validity of publicly editable information in
general.
Typically, an entry is developed by someone with an interest in that topic. The interest
gathers, and others with information can freely add or edit the article. Wikipedia encourages
ongoing, public authorship.
There are also five principles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:5P) that
help guide editing and collaborating on the site (Wikipedia: is an encyclopedia; has a
neutral point of view; is free content; encourages respectful and civil interaction; has
no other firm rules). In addition, most entries have reference links to related articles,
websites, and other sources of information. This can provide multiple paths to help
students validate information.

2. Many teachers like to introduce Wikipedia by having students research a topic for which
they have known and validated information (their high school or hometown, for example, or
a topic they have worked on in class). This provides a fun opportunity to have students
become familiar with the layout of Wikipedia and offers a chance to check the reliability of a
known topic. In addition, Wikipedia offers very detailed information about reliability,
validity, and verifiability at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability.
Getting students into the habit of finding the information, reading it, digesting it, and
then fact-checking provides an in-depth opportunity to merge traditional research with
21st-century web literacy.
Additional information about using Wikipedia in the classroom can be found at
http://www.edutopia.org/using-wikipedia-classroom.
Visit us on the web at www.microsoft.com/education/criticalthinking.
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