Celebrating Wikipedia’s 20th birthday
Wikipedia asks you to imagine, in the words of Jimmy Wales, “a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge”. Today, the 20th anniversary of the birth of the project, is a good time to stop, reflect, and take stock of the extent … Continued
Expanding Wikipedia’s coverage of African topics
Despite being the largest project of its kind in human history with a reach that’s global, Wikipedia’s coverage skews heavily toward articles about the Global North. In much of the rest of the world, coverage can be spotty, and that’s especially true for a topic like politics. This is why a class like Martha Wilfahrt’s African … Continued
From living building materials to printed organs
Some of the most interesting classes work on topics that leave you with a sense that the future is now. Many of the articles Edmund Palermo’s Biology in Materials Science class worked on leave you with that sensation. Living building materials are building materials that mimic properties of living organisms. These include compounds like self-replicating concrete, self-mending biocement, … Continued
Improving reproductive health articles on Wikipedia
The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court has brought the issue of abortion access back into the forefront and people try to understand the impact her confirmation might have on abortion rights in the US. I grew up in a country where abortion was neither legal nor uncommon. While I never … Continued
How we helped voters get neutral information
The 2020 elections are fast approaching in the United States, and as people prepare to vote (often from home, by mail) they’re looking for information that can help them make up their minds. At first glance that seems surprising: Surely almost everyone has made up their minds about whether they support Donald Trump or Joe … Continued
10 years of impact to Wikipedia’s content
This fall, we’re celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Wikipedia Education Program with a series of blog posts telling the story of the program in the United States and Canada. Since its inception in 2010, the program now known as the Wikipedia Student Program has added 66 million words to 90,000 articles. In 2018 the … Continued
How a Wiki Scholar improved a Nobel laureate’s biography
We awoke this morning to the exciting news that the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded today to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna for their work on CRISPR. It’s exciting to see this amazing discovery recognized, and it’s great to see the prize go to women, but I was especially pleased that a participant in one … Continued
Fulfilling your potential
In the decade since Bob Cummings asked Are We Ready to Use Wikipedia to Teach Writing?, the answer for hundreds of instructors has been a resounding “yes!” It’s easy to make a convincing case for using a Wikipedia assignment in the classroom. Writing a Wikipedia article teaches students valuable skills while offering an authentic experience. But … Continued
Scientists should write Wikipedia
Everyone uses Wikipedia. Given its ubiquity and quality, we all use it as a jumping-off point to learn about new topics, or as “external memory” to refresh about things we’re supposed to know. It’s no surprise then, that the way things are covered in Wikipedia has a profound influence on the way things are covered … Continued
Ensuring Wikipedia represents the accomplishments of women scientists
In 2012, Dr. Jennifer Doudna helped make one of the most remarkable breakthroughs in biology — the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing system, which changed editing genomes from science fiction to science. Before Dr. Laura Hoopes started working to improve it as part of Wiki Education’s professional development program, Dr. Doudna’s Wikipedia biography looked pretty substantial. With over 1400 … Continued