Wikipedia vs. Textbooks vs. Primary Sources

Here's an interesting project done by Mr. Byrne at Free Tech 4 Teachers. He had his high school students compare a textbook and wikipedia on the same information. Then he had them compare the information they found to various primary sources.
The results in a nutshell:

1. Textbooks were better for finding the main points.
2. Wikipedia had the same information but was more indepth.
3. Wikipedia included links to additional information and primary sources.

You can read his post here, and you can see his outline for the original project here.

I could see doing the same sort of activity with 4th, 5th, or 6th graders, but changing the topics that are studied (Wisconsin history, American history topids, etc.). I'd guess the results would be similar, but in addition I think elementary students would find that Wikipedia articles were more difficult to understand.

For what it's worth, looking at Wikipedia is interesting to me since I have found myself more and more going to Wikipedia as the first stop on a research journey. The basics are in the outline of the main points at the top, links at the bottom lead to more information, and the reading level is generally not too difficult. Also, within each article, related topics are linked to their own articles.