Wiki not so icky afterall

First of all, I didn’t know that Wikipedia was only launched in 2001. Somehow it seems older than that. Secondly, I will be the first to admit that I am ‘one of those’ who considered it a completely unreliable source. In school I remember having to avoid wikipedia like the plague.. And once that was ingrained in my head, I never turned back. In my tertiary education especially, there was such a heavy and relentless emphasis on only referring to peer-reviewed literature. Unfortunately, clicking the little box for ‘only peer-reviewed journal articles’ in search engines was probably the extent of teaching us critical literacy skills. Well actually that’s not true.. The case is that most of my assignments back then (I did my bachelors degree in psychology) required the critical analysis of specific theories, so it was important for us to pull only ‘reliable’ journal articles about studies relevant to the topic at hand. So in a way, the source/pool of information was pre-determined already.

Anyway! Since wikipedia had taken a backseat in the deepest corner in my brain, I thought it was really interesting listening to my fellow classmates talk about (rave about) their wikipedia uses and experiences (I had such little faith in wikipedia that I didn’t even realise that it would in fact be a good starting point for research).
On top of that, Ive always favoured the teaching and learning perspective of social constructivism, but I never made the connection of wikipedia as a stage for collective intelligence.. Quite foolish, I know. I was also pleasantly surprised to learn about 'simple english wikipedia' for primary school children.
Speaking of a primary school setting, I can definitely see the value of creating class wikis for collaborative learning, allowing for group work and having the children build their knowledge. The trick I see right now is teaching the necessary skills to evaluate and verify the information they come across. Surely it’s not too early to teach critical literacy skills?