Instead of six degrees of Kevin Bacon, students will be working on an at-home exercise in six degrees of Wikipedia. There, I’ll talk about how important it is to explain Wikipedia’s limitations as a source, detail how students can take their beginning research further and outline a final classroom writing exercise. But because Wikipedia is only the initial means to an end of research and not the end of research itself, in part two we’ll take this activity further. Here in part one of this two-part post, I will describe an activity you can use to get students excited about research with Wikipedia. This “Choose Your Own Adventure” navigation means the rabbit hole of learning at Wikipedia is both highly engaging and virtually never-ending. From that new page, other hot links can connect a user to still more words or topics. Most Wikipedia entries are flooded with hot links that allow a user to click instantly to further explanation of any interesting word or topic. However the true strength of Wikipedia is not its prodigious content, but rather its unlimited usability. Its popularity can be simply explained-people can use the site to learn about almost anything in a quick and concise fashion. The world’s encyclopedia is the sixth most-accessed website in the world.

One such activity spawns a storm of appealing outcomes, and teaches students responsible research methods at the same time. To combat this results-driven mindset, teachers can and should introduce classroom activities that promote raw creativity. Children have an innate curiosity about our world that can become quickly tamped down when school systems fixate on standardized tests or obsess over core standards.

Six degrees of separation book