6 Important Wikipedia Tools for Teachers

Wkipedia is a great educational resource for both teachers and students. Its articles appear almost always in the first four links of the search results. I know there are some issues with the use of this resource in education such as : plagiarism, trusted content and many more but still instead of excluding it all together we better learn and teach our students the best ways to use it.

 Everything online has both negative and positive effects and we should always focus on the filled side of the cup. Check out Facts Educators need to Know About Wikipedia to see how important a resource such as this in education. Given this importance I have compiled here a set of tools that are commiserate to Wikipedia. They are great learning tools that can be used in our classrooms with students.


1- Wikisummarizer

WikiSummarizer is an application designed by Context Discovery Inc. The application automatically summarizes the Wikipedia articles. The summaries consist of the most important content and keywords. The  goal is to facilitate finding essential facts and identifying the relevant information across ALL articles so we can benefit from the wealth of facts collected in Wikipedia.



2- The Full Wiki

This is a mash-up between Google Maps and Wikipedia articles. The full Wiki basically geolocates Wikipedia entries. It takes these entries and place them on a Map.



3- Navify

This service is a mash-up of Wkipedia, Flickr, and YouTube. It actually matches videos and images to Wikipedia entries. When you search something in Navify you will get results in three tab displays with related images and related videos included.



4- Wiki Field Trip

This service allows you to explore new places using Wikipedia entries. Just drag the map around and wikipedia articles will appear on the map as red points. Click on them to read the article.Or search using the search box.





5- Video Wikipedia

This is an online project to add videos to Wikipedia articles. The project is in its beginnings and everyone is invited to contribute their videos according to the guidelines specified in the website.



6- Wikihood

Wikihood also uses Google Map services allowing users to geolocalise what they search for. When you type in a query in their search box you will get two kinds of results one is in the form of a map with placemarks and the second next to it is Wikipedia articles.