Wikipedia getting a bad reputation in schools

This posting was sent out as as a plagairism warning to the entire staff at my school. Given the extremely valuable educational use of Wikipedia, I feel it is important to frame how we present such infomation to consider how educators may activate/include its use in schools.

Below is the response I sent to the Media Specialist in response to her Wikipedia warning.

I was very sad to see this email get sent out the entire district. Wikipedia is one of the most useful websites on the internet for students. It is the new Encyclopedia Britannica. I also subscribe to Kairosnews and read the article that they were referring to. It was a situation where a COLLEGE student was researching a paper and posted his research to Wikipedia. Because they maintain extremely high content and factual standards on Wikipedia, the information was edited. The college student noticed this and printed out the edited version and turned it in. As teachers, we do the same when we recommend new sources and/or correct the grammar of our students. I recommend you check out the participatory process of posting and editing information to Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_FAQ

If students do submit papers which are edited by the Wikipedia staff it is as if they are actively authoring history as they see it. Until now, such participation in knowledge creation has been limited to professionals, historians and journalists. If students take the steps to publish their work on Wikipedia (and have it edited), they are to be commended for making real use of their knowledge, research and willingness to share it with others.

"Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement). Wikipedia articles therefore will remain free forever and can be used by anybody subject to certain restrictions, most of which serve to ensure that freedom."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

Wikimedia the umbrella organization for Wikimedia is undertaking the enormous task of creating open knowledge repositories. Their goal is to help institutions such as ours be free from the constraints of textbook publishers and put the few dollars we have into enhancing the quality of our learning experiences instead of just maintaining them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

Good Article: Wikibooks takes on textbook industry

http://news.com.com/Wikibooks+takes+on+textbook+industry/2100-1025_3-588...

"The purpose is really contained in the word 'freely licensed,' which is to make available to anyone in the world, in any language, a curriculum that they can copy, redistribute and modify, for whatever purpose they may have, for free,"