Introduction
editWelcome to the American History group page on Wikipedia! This page/project is for Mr. Will's American History class at St. Clement's School in Toronto, Canada.
If you are a student engaged in this project, at this stage you are working on - or have completed - a comparison of Wikipedia and a traditional encyclopedia...and are ready to start the digital component.
Working individually, students will each create a user account and work towards creating a new article or augmenting an existing one. Your goal is to get your article as close to Wikipedia:Featured Article status as you can.
The first step is to create your own user account. Please do not use your own name, but do choose a name that lends a degree of credibility to your work.
Introduction for Students
editWikipedia is online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone with access to an internet connection. This has created questions, in some circles, about its utility as a source for academic research. Your task is to make Wikipedia a more credible resource.
Wikipedia:Tutorial is the best place to start your adventure with this wiki. Please familiarize yourself with Wikipedia:School and university projects - instructions for students and if you have any questions, check the Help:Contents. If you cannot find what you are looking for, ask Mr. Will.
Please think of yourself as a guest in this online environment, and behave appropriately. I strongly encourage you to visit Wikipedia:Etiquette early on in this task. To my knowledge, we are the first SCS group to use Wikipedia in this way, please remember that you are now responsible for the image our community has, and your behaviour will determine if our relationship with Wikipedia continues.
A couple of last tips: if you have completed editing (for the day) and are about to save the page, please fill out the edit summary box and view a preview of the page to make sure it looks like you want it to look. Only then click the "Save Page" button. You may find the page history tool and watchlist tools to be very useful when you want to check what changes by other editors have been made to the article you are working on.
Preliminary Exercises
editYour first step is up to you. You may wish to dive right into editing and creating content on Wikipedia. Alternatively, you may wish to familiarize yourself with Wikipedia through its tutorials. Whatever you decide, it is important to convert that learning into doing. These preliminary exercises are important because they will give you Wikipedia-specific experience prior to beginning your summative contribution. When you have completed an exercise, please email me with all relevant details.
Important note: make sure you are logged into your account before making any edits. If you are not logged in, your teacher cannot verify who has done the edits, thus they will be unable to recognize your work and assess it. In other words, if you do any edits while not logged in, they will not count toward your achievement for this task.
The changes that you make in these exercises should be legitimate changes. They should not be jokes, deliberate misinformation, or otherwise inaccurate. That would run counter to the objective of this assessment task.
Exercise 1
editFirst, get comfortable with the mechanics of editing Wikipedia pages by going to the User:CHAteach1901/sandbox. The Sandbox is where you can play without making any permanent changes to a page. (Remember how much fun it was to play in the sand when you were little?...) Try out the different formatting features; add a picture with a caption; try inserting a footnote and bullet list. After making edits in the Sandbox, please send me a message to indicate:
- your username
- the approximate time at which you saved your changes
- a brief list of the skills you tried and/or changes you made
This exercise should be completed by November 7.
Exercise 2
editNext, I would like you to try making a small (accurate) change to an existing article: add some content. The objective is not met by changing existing grammar or punctuation, or adding a word or two. You can find articles on just about anything on Wikipedia, so there is no shortage of options. The point of this exercise is to ensure that you know how to add content to an existing page. Make sure you have read the guides mentioned in the introduction section and familiarized yourself with how a wiki works before attempting to do this exercise. You may want to refresh your memory by rereading this page:
When you have completed this exercise, send me a message to indicate:
- your username
- the name of the article that you edited
- a description of the edit that you made, and the time and date that you made it
This exercise should be completed by November 22.
Exercise 3
editI cannot overemphasize the importance of correct citation to the discipline of History. Historians will cite primary and secondary sources in their work. For this exercise, you will add one footnote style citation.
You may add a citation for the information that you added in Exercise 2, or browse the Category:Articles lacking sources to find a missing reference. When you find an article that does not follow Wikipedia:Citing sources guidelines, try to find a reference for an important fact in the article. Please try to use academic sources (primary or secondary) instead of non-academic secondary sources (like newspapers or non-academic web sites). See also Wikipedia:Reliable sources for information on what sources are preferred.
Some examples of well-referenced articles: Katyn massacre, Billy Bishop, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Military history of France, Monopoly (game).
When you have completed this exercise, send me a message to indicate:
- your username
- the name of the article for which you added a citation
- the name of the source that you cited, and whether it is a primary or secondary source
This exercise should be completed by December 2.
Wikipedia Project
editStep 1: Select a topic
- you can choose an existing stub from this list, or search the list of articles requested by other users. (If you are selecting from the latter list, please make sure the article is related to American History and visit the Wikipedia: Article_wizard page first!)
Step 2: Begin researching your topic (consider using sources in the Lassonde Library and your local public library), and adding to your stub/article.
- if you are expanding a stub, do not delete the stub indicator at the bottom of the page. In this task, it is not up to you to determine when Wikipedia's criteria have been met.
Step 3: Final Draft submitted (hard copy) and posted to Wikipedia - due January 10
Step 5: Write a personal statement that assesses the validity and value or Wikipedia as a research tool for high school students - due January 10 (at the latest)
Student Selections from previous years
editOther Resources
editHere are some additional resources, provided by Wikipedia, about writing articles for the online encyclopedia. Please feel free to browse them as you work through this task.
Wikipedia:Writing better articles
These are two pieces that provide advice on writing articles for Wikipedia.
Writing your first Wikipedia article (Wikiprojectoregon)
Write a Wikipedia Article (wikihow)
Editorial Note
editPortions of this page's content is based on the work of Cullen Chandler and Alison Gregory.[1]
- ^ Sleeping with the Enemy: Wikipedia in the College Classroom. The History Teacher 43(2), 247-257.