From an educational perspective (as a both a current student and a future teacher) is Wikipedia a blessing or a burden? As a teacher, what would you tell your future students about Wikipedia's role in education?

From an educational perspective as a students Wikipedia is neither a blessing nor a burden. Many of my college professors do not allow students to use Wikipedia as a source  of information. I do not believe it to be a burden because I still like to get to the website and get general information of the subject that I am writing about. As a future teacher I believe Wikipedia could be a blessing because it is easy access to almost any information that I would want my students to study and be able to understand. The outline of the website is what makes it the easiest to understand. The table of contents can point you in the direction of the subtopic of your topic. I would tell my students that Wikipedia's role in education is not to make things "easier" but to make things a lot more easy to understand. I would also tell them not to go too attached to the website because many of their college professors (unless something changes in the next 3-4 years), will not permit them to use Wikipedia as a citation in a paper,whether it be a research paper or something else.