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Students Assigned to Write Wikipedia Articles
openfrog writes "An inspired professor at University of Washington-Bothell, Martha Groom, made an interesting pedagogical experiment. Instead of vilifying Wikipedia as some academics are prone to do, she assigned the students enrolled in her environmental history course to contribute articles. The result has proven "transformative" to her students. They were no longer spending their time writing for one reader, says Groom, but were doing work of consequence in a "peer reviewed" environment, which enhanced the quality of their output."
And of course, because their articles were new and not notable, they were promptly put up for a deletion vote.
Obviously they weren't writing about Lockerbie Scotland (see Admin Slimvirgin aka the intelligence agent Linda Mack), or Circumcision (see admin Jayg). Or wrote something either of these admins felt was not notable, and deleted wholesale.
I'm tripping over myself to donate more money to WalesCultBomisOPedia!
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of slackers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. If university students are WRITING Wikipedia articles as PART of their assignments, where the hell will they cut and paste from in order to finish by the deadline? And what online resource, pray tell, will the professor go to now to determine if a student has been cutting and pasting? Its like a frickin' hall of mirrors!
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
FR.TED: What does it do?
DOUGAL: Squeeze it there. It's a joke telephone.
FR.TED: Dougal. This is a dog toy.
DOUGAL: What? No it's not Ted, it's a joke telephone.
FR.TED: Dougal this is a toy for dogs. This is something people give dogs on their birthday.
DOUGAL: Now seriously Ted, it's a joke telephone. You just give it to someone and tell them it's a phone and they'll try to make a call on it.
FR.TED: Dougal, who would think this was a telephone? Even a dog knows this isn't a phone.
DOUGAL: Eh..Ted... We'll agree to differ alright.
FR.TED: No we won't agree to differ, because you're very very wrong. Look, does the picture on the on the packet not give you a clue. Why do you think the dog is so happy? He's happy because someone has given him a yellow rubber telephone that makes a noise.
DOUGAL: No! No! He's laughing because some one's trying to make a call on the phone - and now look, I am banning you so I guess I win.. Its a joke telephone and thats all that will be said on the matter.
Get off your pompous a** and look it up yourself.
Nicely put, but consider: the sum total of human achievement is increased in millions of ways every single day in ways which have never been reported on, because... it's not actually newsworthy. It's more like, completely expected.
A lack of human achievement would be newsworthy. Hmmm. Perhaps that's why politics gets so much coverage...
[Citation Needed]
[ think ]
I take it you've never actually *read* a paper by the average high school or college student ...