Norway is an interesting and important case in Europe when it comes to access to both computers and Internet in a school setting, because the country has the highest number of Internet access both at home and at school among the OECD-countries, and digital skills are incorporated systematically in the national curriculum. It is the first country in Europe to have a curriculum explicitly based on digital skills, but the use of ICT is an important educational topic and goal across Europe. Several studies have emphasized that access to technology itself will not provide enhanced teaching or change in teaching practices (Cuban 2001, Madden, Ford et al. 2005, Livingstone 2009, Blikstad-Balas 2012), therefore it is crucial to investigate how the use of ICT is impacting education.

Having Internet connection in the classroom context, adds a tremendous amount of possible new texts to the educational setting. It also challenges the hegemony of what is historically the number one example of a typical institutionalized school text, namely the subject textbook. Even with this enormous variety of potential sources of information on the web, one digital source of information is often the clearly preferred choice for students, and that is the peer produced encyclopedia Wikipedia – increasingly popular globally, and by far the most visited on educational and reference material (Raine and Tancer 2007). Several studies suggest that web users do not always look for the best potential information (Metzger 2007, Rieh and Hilligoss 2008, Fallis 2008, Lim 2009), which makes it important to investigate how students who use Wikipedia  relate to Wikipedia as a source of knowledge. What motivates the students’ use of Wikipedia and how Wikipedia is becoming a central part of school literacy is also important to address.

 This paper presents a study on students’ literacy practices in upper secondary school aiming to describe students’ attitudes towards Wikipedia as a knowledge source in school tasks. The study is framed within the theories of New Literacy Studies ( Street 2003, Gee 2004, Barton 2007) where literacy is seen as a social practice based on texts. The paper specifically explores how the sampled students relate to Wikipedia in a school setting and how they describe their literacy practices where Wikipedia plays a role. A focal issue is what counts as knowledge for the students across school subjects, and what the students consider to be the main advantages and disadvantages of Wikipedia. The main purpose of the present paper thus is to present findings on attitudes the students have towards Wikipedia as a textual basis for school literacy.

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