Middle School
Worksheets
Wikipedia
Not many years ago if you wanted to look things up, you had one of two choices. You could spend your money on an encyclopedia and research at home. Or you could spend your time and pay a visit to your local library. Those were your two main choices - before 2001.
Then in 2001, things changed. Instead of being expensive or time consuming, research became free and fast. That is because 2001 was the year that Wikipedia began.
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, was started in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Originally, it was just an offshoot of another encyclopedia project called Nupedia. Nupedia was meant to be a scholarly encyclopedia written by college professors and others experts, but it was slow to get started. Wikipedia, which was open to anyone, was designed to bring in content more quickly. Nupedia folded after just a few years, but by that time Wikipedia had taken off. Year after year it would continue to grow by leaps and bounds.
Being available free of charge wasn't the only unusual thing about Wikipedia. The really amazing thing about it was that its articles were written by anyone who felt like writing them!
