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For those who are unfamiliar with a wiki, here is a brief overview.
 * Welcome to the wiki.**

The Wiki was created Ward Cunningham in 1994, then put online in 1995. The term came from the WikiWiki shuttle busses at the Hawaiia International Airport. Wiki means fast. The most famous wiki is [|wikipedia] which has over 1.7 million entries in English alone. There are 251 wikipedias of different languages also. Spanish has over 228,000 entries, French has nearly 500,000, and there are over 300,000 for the [|Japawiki].

A wiki is a great place to get information, enter information, and collaborate. But many are troubled by wikis. Why? //Challenge:// What do you know best? Go to [|Britannica] online and search your topic. Then do the same at [|wikipedia]. Which is better? //Challenge//: enter something bias in [|Hillary Clinton's biography] and see how long it lasts. In fact, at 8:50pm, I typed in the word "great" before her job title as "junior Senator." It only took minutes before it was deleted. Do you think bias exists in encyclopedias, newspapers, videos, or textbooks? How quick are they erased?
 * Input**: anyone can create or edit an article in the wikipedia. So who is to tell when a racist posts to Martin Luther King's site?
 * Bias:** is the 9/11 site written by neocons or conspiracists? Wikipedia has rules about bias and knows which articles are more likely to be hit by biased writing. The site is self-policed, meaning they work hard to make sure bias is either noted or deleted.

There are other concerns, but as for research, the wikipedia is a great source of information because they will likely have the information, they will hyperlink to other articles, and they will have the newest information within minutes. For example, go to [|Britannica] again and look up "virginia tech shootings." It doesn't exist. In Wikipedia however, a 126 citations long entry appears last updated hours ago, began at 11:16, [|on the day] of the shooting. And yes, this is the original page. Within 2 hours, it [|looked like this]. Witin 24 hours, [|this].

You'll also notice a discussion page where people can talk about the event, and why they entered the information they did. Often you'll see people defened their entries from criticism.

Collaboration is a 21st century skill and wiki's provide this for free in the easiest way for students to use.

[|Here is a page created by 6th graders]. With it is a blog, that is blocked here, but here is the upload of the blog.

Enough of that. Here's how you use one.