Wikipedia:Writing Wikipedia Articles course/Round 4/Week 1

	Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and Beyond
	a free six week course

Week of 25 February 2014

Wikipedia under the hood

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

Do this:

• Review Week 1 class notes: etherpad.wikimedia.org/WIKISOO|WIKISOO Etherpad
• 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:

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:

• 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:
  • On Blackboard Collaborate
  • On YouTube

Just can't get enough? Extra credit

• 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.)