Wikipedia for All

So we just looked up the term “geranium” in an antiquated, outdated, boring old encylopedia.  We looked up the same term on Britannica.com and on Wikipedia.com.  Man, what a difference.  The boring old encylopedia (from 1999) had three paragraphs about the geranium.  It had one black and white photo.  The information seemed very scientific and uninteresting.  Wikipedia had many beautiful pictures of geraniums and contained so many hyperlinks that I could probably spend several hours reading all of the information about geraniums and anything related to geraniums.  I could read about a particular species of geranium, how to grow geraniums, or how to use them for medicinal purposes- all at the click of a button.  No more licking fingers to flip through crinkly old pages and singing the ABC song in my head to determine whether r comes before t.  I just had to type in the word into the search box and Voila!  There was a wealth of information on the geranium.

I wasn’t very impressed with Britannica.com, either.  It is not as user friendly as Wikipedia.com.  It is riddled with advertisements.  I was constantly interrupted by pop-ups requesting that I pay for a “premium membership.”  If I had not already read about geraniums on Wikipedia, I would not have know which particular section of geraniums to read about on this site (the genus geranium or the common name geranium?).  Not interested in a premium membership.  Why would I be?  There is much more free information on Wikipedia.

Maybe Wikipedia is not 100% correct all the time.  What is? But it is a great place to start.  And best of all- it is not work.  It is fun.  It is entertaining.  It is educational.  What better way to get kids (or adults, for that matter) engaged in learning?

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