Education/Newsletter/February 2014/Articles of Interest in other publications
- Wiki-Med
- The Story of the First Full Wikipedia Course in Israel
On January 14 we celebrated the last week of the semester at the Tel-Aviv University, and specifically the end of the “Wiki-Med” course — the first academic course in Israel dedicated wholly to editing Wikipedia to offer full academic credit to students. The 14-week course, which began on October 15 at the Sackler School of Medicine at TAU, was named “Wiki-Med: The Wondrous World of Wiki and Free Medical Content on Hebrew Wikipedia”, or simply “Wiki-Med”. Read more here
- Wiki Literacy
Review of Successful Strategies for Teaching Undergraduate Research edited by Marta Deyrup and Beth Bloom in Library Journal Two of the authors, William James Hoffer of SHU and Davida Scharf of New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), are working against the academic disdain for Wikipedia. Hoffer, an associate professor of history, asserts that it “is far better for instructors to recognize Wikipedia’s power (and warn of its perils) than to behave like ostriches.” Since students will use Wikipedia anyway, he says, Hoffer encourages professors to have their charges check the validity of the sources used on the site, treating it as a tertiary source. The goal, the professor says, is to make students “use Wikipedia as a starting point rather than an end point.” (fixed typo of Hoffer's name in the original) (read more)
- Louisiana State University faculty member supports student Wikipedia editing
If you teach in the science department at Louisiana State University and want to incorporate a Wikipedia assignment into your classroom, Becky Carmichael is the person to meet... (read more)
- US, Canada students fill 1/3 Encyclopedia Britannica
Quantitative success numbers are in for the fall 2013 term of the Wikipedia Education Program in the United States and Canada. In the fall term, 1,347 students added 11.6 million bytes to Wikipedia, including creating 251 new articles. In the seven terms of the program, students have added enough words to the English Wikipedia to fill 1/3 of Encyclopedia Britannica. And qualitative research projects have found students in the United States and Canada program have added high-quality content to Wikipedia. Learn more about last term's student work.