The Internet Never Lies: A Comparison of the AP World History Textbook and Wikipidia

On Friday in class, I worked with Futaba to find out more about Jainism. For help we used both Wikipedia and the textbook. Between the two I honestly found Wikipedia to be more helpful, and here's why: The textbook has to deal with all human history ever and as a result and get into really specific specifics. It does an incredibly good job of giving us all the overview that we'll need for the AP exam. But when we want to get into specifics, it doesn't really help much because it might give only 1-2 paragraphs of the subject you need to study specifically. When it comes to in class assignments like these, Wikipidia trumps the textbook any day of the week. The good thing about Wikipedia, which many teachers see as a bad thing, is that anybody can edit it. The only time I've ever heard of that power going ary is when Sarah Palin's followers changed the Paul Revere page to match what she said had happened when he warned American's the British were coming. Besides that, there might not be experts editing the pages, but there won't be devout Catholics editing the Jainism page. It would be edited by Jainists or other people who study Jainism, making it nearly as reliable as it could get. I wouldn't want to use Wikipedia for everything school related, but I do think teachers sometimes misinterpret how good of a teaching tool it really is, and it could definitely be used for more school-related projects and activities.