I teach middle school English and use Wikipedia as a research beginning point and as a discussion starter. In science, the students learn to do preliminary observation before developing a hypothesis- same in English. It's also valuable as an example of finding valid sources on the internet. I'll pull up a piece of crap Wikipedia article and compare it to a great one to help them discern between different online sources. They're still learning to effectively evaluate information. Bottom line: do I let them cite it? Heck no. Is it educationally valuable? Yes.
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I teach middle school English and use Wikipedia as a research beginning point and as a discussion starter. In science, the students learn to do preliminary observation before developing a hypothesis- same in English. It's also valuable as an example of finding valid sources on the internet. I'll pull up a piece of crap Wikipedia article and compare it to a great one to help them discern between different online sources. They're still learning to effectively evaluate information. Bottom line: do I let them cite it? Heck no. Is it educationally valuable? Yes.