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Wikipedia:Meetup/Phillips Academy 2021

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The Tang Institute of Phillips Academy and its team of students and teachers of The Workshop are excited to launch our week of Wikipedia dedicated to learning about and exploring Wikipedia's role in, impact on, and significance to democracy on individuals and on community, nation-wide, and global levels. In the process we will gain an understanding of what it takes to become Wikipedians! As the term continues, we will improve our technical skills and grapple with choosing topics, conducting research, writing and revising, peer editing. Our big goal is to organize and host our own public edit-a-thon through which we welcome new and experienced Wikipedians, students, and alumni to join us virtually for a Democracy and Dissent Edit-a-thon, taking place in Andover. At this event, we will move our own work online and support participants in creating, updating, and improving articles pertaining to events, people, locations, and so on, that contribute to or are connected with larger themes of democracy and dissent.

This Wikipedia project enables us to delve into the three main areas for learning and growth in The Workshop:

  • Learning to Learn: identify criteria to evaluate information; think critically about the question, by what criteria and authority do we decide what counts as knowledge? Practice skills for assessing truth and testing validity of content, claims, data
  • Civic Engagement: practice principles of transparency and collaboration in the means of production, assessment, and distribution of knowledge, facts, and information; and understand why these principles are critical to democracy
  • Practice and Craft: a Wikipedia community's job is never done...
The seal of Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts.

Wikipedia Project Overview

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  • Dates: March 24 - April 17, 2021
  • Save the Date: April 9th, 1pm - 4pm EDT: Working Session with Tony Tan (class of 2017) and Dr. Paige Roberts (Director, Archives and Special Collections, OWHL)
  • Save the Date, April 17, 1pm EDT: Talk with Miles McCain (class of 2019): the state of Wikipedia and other forms of digital knowledge and political communication/action--their potential and perils.
  • Description: Over the course of this unit, we will do a deep dive into the world of Wikipedia through readings, discussions, activities, and hands-on creating and editing! This unit will set us up for continuing over the term to improve our skills, develop and edit articles, and become active members of the Wikipedia community.
  • Long-term Goals: 1) Grapple with Wikipedia through a multi-disciplinary lens; 2) Generate questions and identify articles to create and improve; 3) Practice skills and tools, play in our sandbox; 4) Participate in knowledge production by researching, writing, and editing; 5) Plan and facilitate a Democracy and Dissent Edit-a-thon to be held sometime this spring term!

Brief History of Wikipedia at Andover

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On the 20th anniversary of the founding of Wikipedia this year, alumnus Miles McCain (class of 2019) collaborated on a provocative article, Inauthentic Editing: Changing Wikipedia to Win Elections and Influence People. But, Andover's connection with Wikipedia goes farther back. In 2016, the Brace Center for Gender Studies partnered with Dr. Roberts from Archives and Special Collections and several Abbot Academy alumnae to host the first campus edit-a-thon. Participating in the event was Tony Tan (class of 2017), now a senior at Georgia Tech. Watch this video to hear how and why Tony has continued his passion for Wikipedia! A few short years later in 2020, another student, Jiashu "Jason" Huang (class of 2021) launched the student Wikipedia club, and has personally created the page Sung Sing Kwan, class of 1912 as well as the Phillips Academy article for Wikipedia China! Go to MediaSpace on PANet to watch the video, "The Workshop Presents: Wikipedia Talk with Jason Huang '21" and find out why Jason think's Wikipedia just might save democracy. Ask Dr. Roberts why she advocates for a Wikipedian-in-Residence position for Andover. Tony, Jason, and Dr. Roberts will be joining us this week to lend their expertise and mentorship.

Let the Games Begin

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Before we get "down to business," let's play some games!

Getting Seriously Fun Now

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Although at least 41,043,737 Wikipedia accounts have been created and 146,685 people are actively editing right now, that number probably doesn't include many of us. Not yet, that is!

The first step is to set up your own account and get some quick tips for beginners. We have a few brief tutorial videos just for you from Jiashu "Jason" Huang '21 and our own Dr. Z! Check these out:

Jason's Tutorial #1: How to Create an Account

Jason's Tutorial #2: Setting Up Your Sandbox

Jason's Tutorial #3: Using Functions (comments, titles, internal links)

Dr. Z's Tutorial: Learning How to...


Short Cuts:

Create a Wikipedia account here

Build Background Knowledge

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Explore our reading list of fascinating articles and sources to expand our understanding of the promise and perils of the most accessible, incalculably influential, democratically crowdsourced platform for knowledge production on the planet:

Articles

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Websites and Multimedia

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Building Skills and Expertise

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The best way to learn any artful craft or new domain is by actually practicing it. So, we won't only be reading and talking about Wikipedia, we'll be active practitioners who:

*Translate articles into different languages

*Generate a list of articles to create/expand/edit

*Create new media to upload to Wikipedia Commons

*Track our completed Wiki pages

*Participate in Wikipedia projects like WikiProject Climate Change

*Plan and organize our own edit-a-thon

Mission for today/Measuring Our Impact

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The goals of our work today are to: 1. Add at least one citation or one sentence to Wikipedia. Or, improve the readability of a Wikipedia page (edit). 2. Create, improve and/or add to knowledge on Wikipedia about issues, people, or events related to broad themes of democracy and dissent. 3. Increase awareness of the benefits of contributing to Wikipedia. 4. To enhance the confidence of skills of students to edit Wikipedia.

New articles created

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Please arrange in alphabetical order

Andrew Kung: Goal today is to touch up biographical information and inspiration behind artwork. (marcusjohnson02)

Audrey Nuna (Cheryl)

Jiehae Park: Goal is to continue writing a biographical page for her (Nico)

NYC Coalition for Educational Justice: Draft created- working on editing and improving to publish. Submitted for drafts, but got deleted. (Sascha)

Red Canary Song (Hazel)

Women Cross DMZ: Goal is to continue drafting up a provisional page for the org (Meeeeeeerzfu)

Articles improved

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TBD, please arrange in alphabetical order

Adultism (Harry.chanp)

American frontier and California Gold Rush (Kth.wang)

A. Phillip Randolph (Bill Bobert)

Fashion activism (Nico)

Henry L. Stimson (Tyler)

Garchen Rinpoche (Ryan)

Propaganda in the United States (mloveshk)

Standpoint theory (Clara)

Public school funding in the United States (Sascha)

Asian Americans in arts and entertainment (Cheryl)

List of Arista Records artists (Cheryl)

Fannie Lou Hamer (partyptarmigan)

Articles translated

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TBD, please arrange in alphabetical order

Leonid Afremov (Catherine): Wikipedia France used as reference; additional information added

References/citations added

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TBD, please arrange in proper citation order

Adultism (Harry.chanp)

Copyright (Catherine)

Henry L. Stimson (Tyler)

Intellectual property (Catherine): some new edits added as well

Young_Lords (Angie)

Voter suppression in the United States (Hazel)

Standpoint theory (Clara)

# of words and images/new media added

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Trove of Info for Editing Wikipedia

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Tools and templates

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Appreciations

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