Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Courses/Spring 2011/Arab Media (Adel Iskandar)/PostSecondSession

Thanks for attending Tuesday's presentation.

Assignments edit

Please read each entry. If you haven't already completed any of these (some are new), please do so at your earliest convenience:

Please take this 10-minute survey:
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22BQTZCHJ4V

From the Wikipedia Foundation:
Our Wikipedia assignment this term is part of the Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Initiative -- an experimental project to determine the best ways of using Wikipedia in the classroom. A crucial part of this project is to determine what students like you are learning from the assignment, and to do that, we need a baseline at the beginning of the semester.

Note that when you get to Question 14 -- "Have you worked on a Wikipedia assignment this semester?" you should answer "no" at this point.

It's critically important that every student in the class takes the survey -- please spend a few minutes to answer the questions now.

Add your entry to the course page

To do this, scroll to the "Students" section. Add your entry by placing this text at the bottom of the "Students" section. *{{User|YOUR_USERNAME}}. Replace "YOUR_USERNAME"

Create your userpage.

It should be a short introduction to the rest of the Wikipedia community, and you have a chance to test out editing a little bit. Here's some instructions, and also here's Rob's page for a model.

Choose an Online Ambassador.

To read more about online ambassadors read this link, or for a short summary: "Online Ambassadors are Wikipedians with a track record of helping newbies who have been trained to assist and mentor students enrolled in the Public Policy Initiative."

To choose an online ambassador, go to Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Policy/Online_Ambassadors. After browsing the list, pick an online ambassador. You then have to contact this user by either selecting "Choose as Mentor" or "Contact by email". Either option requires filling out a form which will send this user a message. If you rather conduct communication via e-mail, I recommend "Contact by email", as they will reply to your request via e-mail. Otherwise, they will leave messages on your Wikipedia usertalk page.

It is very important and to your benefit that you get paired with an online ambassador. If there's any problem, please let us know.

Enable refTools

This will help you in adding citations. It is what we used today when adding a reference to the basketball article. To do this, while logged in, click on "My Preferences" in the links on the very top-right. Then, click "Gadgets". Next, when you see a checkbox for "refTools", click that and submit the form.

Create a sandbox.

Here's a very helpful video if you need help creating a sandbox. Using the handouts we shared in class today, please create a very simple sandbox page that uses at least two internal links, two sections, and one reference. You can make up something, or keep it real. We're not concerned with content now, but rather helping you learn the technical aspects of editing. I created a sample. If you're stuck, you can go to edit my page to see the code, and use that as a model.

To use the refTools you enabled in the previous step - click the "cite" button. You'll notice a dropdown appear below the cite button. On the left will be a dropdown where you select the appropriate type of reference (ex. book, newspaper, website). The associated form will appear. Upon completion of the form, the code for your reference is generated.

Leave a talk page message for Jeff.

You may do this at this link. Please leave a link with your sample sandbox page, and sign your entry with four tildes (~~~~). Jeff will reply with a message on your talk page. This will give you some practice with the whole Wikipedia messaging system.

We added all kinds of resources to this page, including the slides we went over in both sessions. Official Resources Page

The Campus Ambassador program is on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/WikipediaOnCampus
Following up on our discussion about reliable sources, this is the Wikipedia guideline on the matter: Identifying reliable sources.

Thank you!

-- Jeff, PJ and Rob