There I was, about to kick off my 7th grade unit on research and academic writing with a detailed discussion on epistemology and the history of knowledge as it relates to middle school term papers, when some innate teacher sense, (one not completely different from the convenient plot device that allows writers documenting the continuing adventures of Peter Parker to engage in a bit of very short term foreshadowing), tipped me off to the fact my students may not find this approach particularly engaging. Tossing aside my carefully planned approach to the unit, I threw my students onto Wikipedia. After all, I had no more lesson plans, and what harm could a bunch of 7th-10th graders do to an encyclopedia, anyway...
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Should they one day make one of those uplifting teacher movies about this experience, they may describe the origin of this project that way, but in fact, I have thought long and hard about this. Here's a few of the reasons why I think teachers should use Wikipedia to teach middle and high school students about writing research papers.