On Sat, 2010-01-09 at 21:14 +0000, geni wrote: > 2010/1/9 Charles Matthews <[email protected]>: > > Thomas Dalton wrote: > >> 2010/1/9 Chris McKenna <[email protected]>: > >> > >>> On Sat, 9 Jan 2010, Charles Matthews wrote: > >>> > >>>> The point (for the guide that Brian and I are apparently writing) is > >>>> that "empowerment" is a good buzzword, but there is a small, treacherous > >>>> area to explore from a teachers' point of view: accounts for minors > >>>> should not give personal details, so a "role account" for say, > >>>> Tynecastle High School, looks more appropriate. But there are > >>>> administrative reefs also, namely the deprecation of role accounts and > >>>> shared passwords in general. Something can be done in practical terms by > >>>> stating that the project has a fixed term, will be retired, and will > >>>> have its password changed by a school staff member. > >>>> > >>> Would not it be perhaps better for the individual students to have > >>> accounts, but under teh control of the school. Perhaps based on their > >>> school pupil number (e.g. Tynecastle-091 Tynecastle-122) which means that > >>> attribution for good and bad edits could be given to the individual rather > >>> than the school. > >>> > >> > >> Yes, that's the usual recommendation. I'm not sure what you mean by > >> the school having control of them, though. > >> > >> > > In the scenario of the school in Edinburgh, a group is told to execute a > > certain project on WP. The attraction of a single account is clear from > > the point of view of monitoring: a single edit history tells you > > everything. If you have a group editing one page - and I have met just > > this on WP, American college students assigned a task of upgrading a > > nominated page - a bunch of people all trying to edit from different > > accounts can lead to edit conflicts, if no worse. > > > > Any account where the email address supplied went to a computer in the > > school's administration would be "controlled" by the school, from the > > point of view of resetting the password. > > > > This discussion seems like fine tuning to me, actually; but, yes, I can > > see it might be worth going into the issues a little in a guide. (I do > > want to be concise, though ... all experience suggests verbose is easier > > to write and less likely to be read.) > > > > Charles > > > > Well so far everything you have described would risk getting you > blocked from wikipedia. > > Probably the most important thing to do is to contact > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects > first.
Speaking as someone with the CheckUser privilege (on enWN, not enWP),
you want individual students to have individual accounts. Use of
CheckUser will reveal their edits as coming from a school IP address -
and they likely will edit from home too.
Someone official, such as a teacher, contacting the schools and
university projects people is a really good idea too.
As a worst-case the school IP can be blocked from anonymous edits and
the creation of accounts.
If the school's staff deal with either telling the pupils what user
accounts to create, or finding out which they've chosen, no information
about minors' identities is shared online. If a pupil is blocked then
real-world implications only come into effect if a member of school
staff becomes aware of it.
Of course, there are two separate issues here now. The first, use of
Wikipedia as a resource; the second, actual contribution to Wikipedia.
To people on this list, and Wikimedians in general, the two are
intimately intertwined. Jon Beasley-Murray makes the best case for
actually contributing to learn about Wikipedia:
Overall, a Wikipedia assignment offered lots of possibilities,
including:
* teaching students about Wikipedia, an important site
that they use (and too often misuse)
* improving Wikipedia itself, by generating new content on
topics where its coverage is lacking
* encouraging students to produce something that had
relevance outside the classroom, in the public sphere
* giving them tangible goals that were measured by
something other than my own professorial judgement
* changing their views about writing, by stressing the
importance of ongoing revision
* teaching them about research and about how to use and
evaluate sources
His response (this is a University professor) to the "using Wikipedia"
question is,
"If a Wikipedia article is a good one, then you won't need to
quote it, as it will have links to all the relevant sources. And
if it doesn't have those links, then it isn't a good article,
and shouldn't be quoted in any case.
Before this semester, I explicitly banned students from quoting
Wikipedia articles in their essays. And I will continue to do
so. I also look askance at them citing dictionary definitions.
And though they don't quote Britannica (I think Wikipedia has
now for all intents and purposes replaced Britannica), I would
likewise be unimpressed if they were to do so.
On the other hand, of course, as you say, Wikipedia can be an
excellent starting point for research. I personally use it often
precisely for that reason."
[Full interview: http://enwn.net/bbC8]
Now, that's in tertiary education. It was the creation of articles on
Latin-American literature.
What, exactly, would stop an A-level class from trying to bring an
article on their school or a notable local building or location up to
Good Article status?
I'm over 22 years past the Scottish secondary education system; there
was no Internet in schools then, and the few computers were a novelty
that pupils knew more about than teachers. [I was one of the pupils that
basically ran our school's BBC Micro lab because the teacher was a
mathematician.]
So, the question really has to be *where* does this fit within the
national curriculum and it's devolved counterparts? Are there any
honest-to-goodness teachers in WMUK? Can we recruit some?
The WMUK wiki is a great place to put together some sort of teachers'
guide - but it needs input from real teachers who know the curriculum.
They can set out lesson plan frameworks. It could be improving students'
English by improving existing articles; delving into local history (with
the availability of local newspaper and library archives); or some other
possibility I haven't thought of.
Perhaps what's needed isn't a press release to counter the Telegraph's
negative coverage but, for WMUK members to actually approach their own
secondary schools, highlight the guidelines and a few choice quotes, and
try to help them join the 'cult-of-wiki' ;-)
Mostly this would be Wikipedians; Commoners could do so in relation to
"Wikipedia Loves Art".
With my focus predominantly on Wikinews I'm watching with interest as
what appears to be an Illinois highschool student, without visible
school staff support, teaching himself to be a sports journalist by
covering local inter-school sports tournaments. There is, honestly,
nothing to stop pupils putting together a school newspaper submitting
some work to Wikinews.
There are a range of projects under the WMF banner. There's no way I
could do a Wikipedia Academy because that's not my project. In all
honesty, I only call myself a Wikimedian on the basis of having learned
enough to legally and correctly upload content to Commons and tag,
copyedit, or change Wikipedia articles without violating policy.
This ended up longer than I expected; could a strategy of grassroots
work, with 'learning experience' errors, be a better use of resources
than countering UK mainstream media reportage?
--
Brian McNeil <[email protected]>
Wikinewsie.org
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