Wiki Summarizer is a site that allows you to search Wikipedia, have articles summarized by key points, and provides lists of articles that are related to your original search. Here’s how it works; let’s say I enter the search term “Mount Everest,” when I do that Wiki Summarizer provides a list of key points about Mount Everest. I can also get a list of related search terms and related articles through Wiki Summarizer.

List of key points from my search for “Mount Everest” on Wiki Summarizer.

List of related search terms from my search for “Mount Everest” on Wiki Summarizer.

Applications for Education
I learned about Wiki Summarizer from Bill Ferriter’s recent blog post in which he proposed using it as a substitute for Google’s Wonder Wheel which has gone offline again. Wiki Summarizer could help students who have a very broad research topic narrow down their searches.

And as a point of clarification, like a lot of teachers I do allow my students to use Wikipedia as a starting point when they are researching a topic. A good Wikipedia article will include links to sources that I encourage my students to follow in the same manner that I used to use the bibliography of general reference books to find the books that that general reference book used. To learn more about how Wikipedia functions and strives to maintain reliability watch Common Craft’s explanation of Wikipedia in the video below.

(If you’re reading this in RSS you will have to click through to watch the video).