Watch the MediaWise Teen-Fact Checking Network (TFCN) video and answer the questions about using Wikipedia to find credible information. Check out the vocab list below.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Warm up:
- Where on a Wikipedia article can you check the reliability of the information?
- What three icons could you look for that tell you about the trustworthiness of a page?
- What are 2-3 weaknesses of Wikipedia?
- What are a couple of suggestions to use Wikipedia responsibly?
Dig deeper:
- What are the three Wikipedia content policies? How effective is the system to monitor Wikipedia content? Provide two specific details from the video to support your opinion.
- Based on what you have learned from the video, how will the way you use articles from Wikipedia change when you are looking for factual, credible information for a school project??
ACTIVITY
Check your sources! Wikipedia includes sources at the end of its articles.
- Pick a topic from history or your favorite class that interests you.
- Look it up on Wikipedia and check out the footnote citations. Do the sources look credible to you? From authors and organizations that you trust? Share what you learned about sources on Wikipedia with a peer or together as a class.
KEY VOCABULARY
- citation – the way a writer tells readers that specific material came from another source
- footnote – a type of in-text citation; uses a superscript (raised) number1 and the corresponding source citation is located at the bottom (or foot) of the same page
- reading upstream — tracking information found online back to its original source
- To find out the definition of Wikipedia, see Wikipedia! (Don’t forget to check the footnotes.)
ADDITIONAL LINKS
- Sydney Morning Herald: Evidence suggests Wikipedia is accurate and reliable
- Wikipedia “good article” entry
- Wikipedia “good article criteria”
These lessons were developed by PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs in partnership with MediaWise and the Teen Fact-Checking Network, which are part of the Poynter Institute. This partnership has been made possible with support from Google.
