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

[Fred Bauder]

> Hi,
>
> On 2 July 2011 23:28, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:
>> On 2 July 2011 23:16, Isabell Long <isabell121 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> 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.  ;-)
>
> Let's try part of the second-to-last sentence again: "... an
> assignment on a subject you can't go straight to a Wikipedia article
> for information on...".

That gets hard, probably beyond what a school teacher can do, or get away
with. We have areas in Wikipedia that are not covered, sometimes not even
minimally, because they are not part of the canon of knowledge. Any
school teacher, indeed any Wikipedia editor, who ventures into such
territory aggressively can expect serious trouble.

For example, the Great Recession, an article deleted on Wikipedia. The
article is about the current economic malaise and the fact that there
seems to be no way out. Essentially the collapse of capitalism, and for
the exact reasons Marx predicted, concentration of capital and falling
rate of profit.

A decent assignment for a post-graduate seminar, as would be a creative
exercise about how and why the Chinese dictatorship will collapse. Might
be nice for a Harvard class with a few little princes enrolled.

>
>> 3rd grade, or post-graduate?
>
> That's another question I meant to ask: what are we defining "students"
> as here?
>

Jake Franklin was breaking it down by grade level. And that makes some
sense, although it would probably work best for kids of any level who are
really into it. Wikipedia would be a grim business if you were forced to
do it. Perhaps from 3rd grade or so to post-graduate level with layers.
So maybe 6 English language wikis, closed to all but enrolled students,
although it is ideal for home schooling.

>> 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.
>
> Ah, right.  Like the example you used earlier: an article on Lady Gaga.
> :-)

Except that we have pretty much exhausted that subject. There are things
children are interested in are under Wikipedia's radar.

>
>> 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.
>
> That's very true.  This question delves a bit into the specifics and
> "rules" of running such a project, but would that then get put onto
> the Wiki (going back to my "what if" in my previous email...), would
> the student be asked to re-do it, or would all of this be at the
> discretion of the supervising teacher?  I assume the latter, but we
> don't have to delve into the specifics at this time of night.  :-)
>
> Isabell.
>

Re-do by command would be grim. I think learning and creativity would be
maximized by evaluation of the best work done of the student's choosing.

Fred