A few weeks ago, I came across articles at LifeHacker and Hack College mentioning a web service called The Full Wiki.
I was intrigued. I often tell my students that Wikipedia isn’t a source that they should ordinarily use directly in their work, but that it can be a good place to get a quick overview of a topic. They may also find it helpful to look at the references an article cites.
The Full Wiki seeks to make Wikipedia more useful for students. You can see it in action here:
Some of the references that pop up go beyond what’s listed in the works cited section of the Wikipedia article, and may well be useful to students, as seen in the example below [click on any of the images below for a larger version]:
At this point, however, The Full Wiki won’t work for all articles in Wikipedia:
That’s to be expected, though, as the service is currently in beta.
After exploring The Full Wiki for a while, I came to the following conclusions:
(1) It has good potential to lead students to helpful resources beyond those listed in a Wikipedia article’s works cited section. That makes it a potentially very useful tool for students, and it’s worth keeping an eye on its development.
However:
(2) There are still too few articles ready for use with the service to make it a generally useful tool just yet.
(3) The usual caveats apply. Students will need to be instructed in the use of this tool, just as they need to be instructed in the use of any other tool. They’ll also need to be reminded of the importance of evaluating articles for themselves, rather than assuming that a source is suitable because it shows up on a mouseover.
Have you tried The Full Wiki, or similar services? Please share your thoughts about them in the comments.
[Lead image: Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by mikeeperez. All other images by the author and Creative Commons licensed.]
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