Wikipedia:Writing Wikipedia Articles course/Round 3/Week 1
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Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and Beyond | ![]() |
a free six week course |
Week of 6 August 2013
- Archive of class session (one hour video)
- Archive of lab session (one hour video of Q&A with students) will be linked here a day or so after the lab.
- You may be interested in the archived sessions from Round 2/Week 1.
- Be sure to join a team and introduce yourself to your teammates!
- Notes from the session: etherpad.wikimedia.org/WIKISOO|WIKISOO Etherpad
Wikipedia under the hood
[edit]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.
We will explore how learners increasingly use Wikipedia as scaffolding, as they begin to build a general understanding of a topic. Herein lies an opportunity: how can we work toward a broader understanding of a topic like Open Educational Resources (OER)? Does Wikipedia help us speak a common language about openness in education? If not, what can be done to improve that? The session will conclude with practical steps to create a Wikipedia account and get started editing.
Homework
[edit]Do this:
[edit]- Complete this brief survey providing basic info about yourself
- Create a basic Wikipedia user page • video • About user pages
- Join a team on the Teams page - a few sentences will suffice! In addition to a general introduction, please answer the following questions:
- What are you hoping to get out of this course?
- Have you ever edited an article on Wikipedia (or another wiki)?
- 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:
[edit]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.
- General overview: WP:Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia
- Some insights: WP:Ten things you may not know about Wikipedia
- The following chapters in How Wikipedia Works(PDF) (2008):
- Chap. 1: What's in Wikipedia?
- Chap. 2: The World Gets a Free Encyclopedia
- Chap. 4: Understanding and Evaluating an Article
- Chap. 6: Good Writing and Research
- Mahzarin Banaji (December 2010),Wikipedia is the Encyclopedia that Anybody Can Edit. But Have You?Observer Vol.23, No.10.
- Neil Butcher (2011), A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources, chapter 1. Commonwealth of Learning.
Watch this:
[edit]- 10 minute video: What are Creative Commons Licences and Open Educational Resources? (available for download; streaming version available soon)
- If you'd like to review the "view history" tab (covered in the Week 1 webinar), see this instructional video.
- Archive of Week 1 class from the previous round of the course (one hour video) available in two formats:
- On Blackboard Collaborate. (requires Java, see main course page if you need help connecting)
- On YouTube (lower quality, but easy to stream online)
- Archive of Week 1 lab session from the previous round of the course (one hour video of Q&A with students) available:
Just can't get enough? Extra credit
[edit]- 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, 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.)
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Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and Beyond (WIKISOO) |
Past courses: March • May • August 2013 February 2014 • February 2017 |