Wikipedia

Wikipedia:WIKISOO1

Writing Wikipedia Articles (#WIKISOO) self-paced version
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WIKISOO Week 1
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Welcome to WIKISOO! Week #1 of 6

Wikipedia under the hood

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Our first live session took place the last week of February. We covered a lot of ground: we provided an introduction to the various tools and practices we use in the course, and also delved into the central topics of the course: Wikipedia and open educational resources (OER).

What is Wikipedia? What has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to volunteer their time to build millions of articles in hundreds of languages? We begin with a survey of the project's history, values, and culture.

The concept of OER starts with a simple idea: by using the Internet to its full advantage, educators can share the work of creating high quality learning resources. They can build on one another's work, instead of duplicating each other's efforts. As a result, there is a huge and growing collection of freely available, freely reusable, learning materials available to teachers and informal learners around the world.

But in practice, there is lots of complexity to the topic of OER -- and related topics like open access publishing, open content, free licenses, etc.

When learners are informally researching a topic, they increasingly turn to Wikipedia for a basic overview, before turning to more detailed or authoritative sources. If we want to help expand awareness and understanding of a topic like Open Educational Resources, Wikipedia presents an opportunity: by improving its articles, we can help its many readers form a clearer understanding of the topic.

Do Wikipedia's articles related to OER help teachers and learners around the world to speak a common language about openness in education? If not, what can be done to improve these articles? This is the central question we will explore in Writing Wikipedia Articles course.

Outline for the first class

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The first hour of class features a structured presentation, outlined below. Video of the session is available (see the upper right corner of this page).

The remainder of the class session provided an opportunity for students to get started on homework and ask questions.

  • 7:00 Welcome to the course. Why will we be delving into Wikipedia and Open Education? What can our students hope to accomplish?
  • 7:05 Instructor introductions.
  • 7:10 How the course works
  • 7:20 General introduction: Why is Wikipedia interesting and worth understanding? What opportunities for the OER movement are envisioned through improving Wikipedia? How do wikis work? What are Wikipedia's core values and principles?
  • 7:30 Tour of an article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_educational_resources.
  • 7:40 Tour of the main software features of Wikipedia:
    • Article
    • Edit
    • View history
    • Talk
  • 7:50 Explain what a watch list is, and why it is useful.
  • ACTIVITY: Add a few pages to your watch list.
  • 8:00 Unstructured time: Ask questions, work on homework!

Homework

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Do this:

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  • Create a basic Wikipedia user page. Instructions and considerations
  • Edit one or two articles anywhere on Wikipedia: make a sentence more clear, fix a typo, etc.
    • Check the Wikipedia Community Portal (you'll see a link on the left of every screen) for suggestions of articles that need help with grammar, spelling, illustration, etc.
    • Having trouble finding an article to edit, or not ready yet? Try starting an article in your sandbox -- a place to play around without actually changing "real" encyclopedia entries. Instructional video

Read this:

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These readings will help you get a general familiarity with Wikipedia. You do not need to read every page, but we hope you will find them useful in getting a general feel for the site. The last item will give you some background on open educational resources.

Watch this:

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Just can't get enough? Extra credit

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  • Read the Open Educational Resources article, or another article on the Communicate OER project Content page. Start thinking about how you might improve the article (later in the course).
  • If you see simple fixes you'd like to make, comment on the talk page or even edit the article.
  • Comment on an OER-related talk page (see theCommunicate OER Content page for ideas)
  • Review one of these articles on the relevant talk page - i.e. is it relevant/thorough? What would you like to see changed, added or deleted? (Hint: the "talk" tab is located just to the right of the "article" tab in the upper left of every article.)
    Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and Beyond (WIKISOO)  
Past courses: March • May • August 2013
February 2014 • February 2017
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