This page contains the audio file and session resources from a 2008 UBC Town Hall presentation by Brian Lamb, Jon Beasley-Murray and Wyeth Wasserman on using Wikipedia as a platform for learning

Presenation

Session presentation audio: (30MB MP3 ~60:00)

<flashmp3>http://ia700304.us.archive.org/28/items/Blamb-AcademicAdventuresInWikipedia628-2/Blamb-AcademicAdventuresInWikipedia628_64kb.mp3</flashmp3>

• Jon Beasley-Murray - Posthegemony weblog, Wikipedia user page

• Wyeth Wasserman

• Brian Lamb, Abject Learning weblog

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Wikipedia: threat or menace?

• If nothing else, the sheer scale of Wikipedia's growth points to the power of a new model of production, perhaps commons-based peer production. It also points to the potential dangers of closed models, based on a notion of information scarcity. Certainly, given its loss of influence, Britannica might have wished it had handled things differently.

• Wikipedia has traditionally been viewed with suspicion in higher education circles. Various forms of Wikipedia bans have been the most prominent response.

• Media and education theorists such as Henry Jenkins have cited Wikipedia as an exemplar test case in the development of new media literacies. As Jenkins points out, these new literacies do not replace traditional ones, they build upon them.

"Today's digital youth are in the process of creating a new kind of literacy; this evolving skill extends beyond the traditions of reading and writing into a community of expression and problem- solving that not only is changing their world but ours, too... In this new media age, the ability to negotiate and evaluate information online, to recognize manipulation and propaganda and to assimilate ethical values is becoming as basic to education as reading and writing." - Jonathan Fanton, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Using Wikipedia at UBC

• Jon's slides on The Madness of Wikipedia

• Case Study: Oncology Education (MEDG421) Wyeth's presentation slides
  • Original article drafts on UBC servers; Wikipedia articles Deleted in Colorectal Cancer, DLC1, Survivin, SFPR1

• Case Study: Latin American Literature (SPAN312) Murder, Madness and Mayhem

A challenge to educational technologists

• If the pressures pushing thinking from a "managed course environment" toward the personal learning environment were not challenging enough, how does our profession support activity in environment that we do not control, or administer? Is there value we can add?

• The present dire state of educational technology in Wikipedia. The smack across our collective faces...

• The moribund state of the EduTech Wikipedia authoring group.

• The rhetorical challenge of Wikipedia to academic and online professionals.

More...

• Jon Beasley-Murray, "Was Introducing Wikipedia to the Classroom an Act of Madness Leading Only to Mayhem if not Murder?"

• Jon Beasley-Murray, "Advice on Using Wikipedia in Colleges and Universities

• Five pillars of Wikipedia

• How to edit a page

• Writing better articles

• WikiEducator.org - MediaWiki software used to develop collection of open educational resources. Some fantastic work.

• Henry Jenkins, What Wikipedia Can Teach Us About New Media Literacies

• Listing of Wikipedia school and university projects

• Transcription Factor Encyclopedia - "the goal of the TFe is to create an online encyclopedic collection of well-studied transcription factor proteins, combining a mixture of both hand-curated and automatically-generated content to provide users with a wide set of information relevant to a transcription factor protein of their interest.", example