[Foundation-l] Fwd: wikiEducation: The Classroom Wikipedia

Sat Jul 2 22:28:03 UTC 2011

> Hi,
>
> On Sun, Jul 03, 2011 at 12:14:39AM +0400, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
>> On Sat, 2 Jul 2011 13:49:58 -0600 (MDT), "Fred Bauder"
>> <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:
>> > We should do this before some aggressive outfit like Wikinfo jumps
>> in...
>> > It wouldn't be an anyone can edit wiki. Only authorized student
>> accounts
>> > could edit. It would be a teaching tool.
>>
>> To do this is not a big deal, but it would only have an added value for
>> us
>> if the result could be somehow merged into Wikipedia once the
>> assessment
>> has been completed. It is not difficult to organize, but it requires
>> some
>> preliminary planning (only articles absent in Wikipedia would be
>> assigned?
>> What if they did not exist at the time of the assignment but were
>> created
>> before the assessment? Who will merge? etc).
>
> Sorry to dampen things, but as we're proposing "what if"s, what if some
> of Wikipedia's material was copied to it and it just became a kind of
> duplicate of Wikipedia run, as proposed, by the WMF?  There would be
> admins etc, but
> run by students for students: that's not always a good thing.  With
> regard to what you said about maybe only articles absent in Wikipedia
> would be
> assigned, that's a good idea (it avoids the direct "what if" mentioned
> above),
> but an assignment you can't straight to a Wikipedia article for
> information but actually have to go browsing the web for?  That would
> horrify many students I know.  ;-)
>
> It's definitely a good idea though, I'm not disputing that.  I'd
> certainly get involved!
>
> Disclaimer: I am a student.  :-)
>
> Isabell.
>

3rd grade, or post-graduate? Well, the existence of a Wikipedia article
on almost any subject is always going to be there, no matter what kind of
writing exercise students participate in. Great assignments will be about
subjects our regular editors don't have much interest in but students do,
ephemeral, topical subjects.

Copying from or using Wikipedia, or any other encyclopedia, as a source
would diminish rather than increase evaluation of work; that is pretty
much standard practice anyway.

Fred