Thing 6 - Wikipedia

I decided to choose Wikipedia as the Web 2.0 tool to write about. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that any user can edit. This ability is Wikipedia's greatest strength, but also its greatest weakness. While the open editing policy has allowed for millions of articles to be posted, it also allows for anyone to edit false information onto a page. It is this main reason why Wikipedia is an unreliable source when performing research, but that doesn't mean it is without use in schools. Many of Wikipedia's articles contains cites from reliable sources. On a personal note, I find myself scouring Wikipedia often whenever I'm bored. I'll look up various articles either dealing with history, math and science, or demographics for example. When I find an interesting point I'd like to learn more about, I always click on the citation to get directed to the reference the editor used when creating that portion of the article. If it is a website that I have access to, I'll click on that and look around on there, hoping to gather more new information on the subject I was reading about. Students can use Wikipedia in a similar way. It's an easy website to access and to gather information from, and it also may contain leads of where to find additional, more reliable information that can be used in a proper research paper.