Wikipedia Assignments

I just came across an article in Wikipedia which suggests Googling the words "Syllabus 'no wikipedia' ". I tried it and turned up over 4,270 entries. Most of those entries seems to be online syllabi that forbid the use of Wikipedia.

I am not going to try and convince anyone that Wikipedia is the new bible of collective knowledge, but it can be a pretty cool tool for learning. Assignments that incorporate Wikipedia can help students learn the concepts of public scholarship, collaboration, author credibility and of course, some healthy skepticism when it comes to using Wikipedia as a research tool.

Here are some resources that I have compiled if you are considering using Wikipedia in class:

This page talks about Wikipedia's Public Policy Initiative . I blogged about this a few posts below.

Here is a sample of the courses that are being created through the Public Policy Initiative.

And some other examples of assignments, not necessarily policy related.

Wikipedia’s 10 Steps For Using Wikipedia In Your Course.

And some best practices.

And here is Jon Udell's Heavy Metal Umlaut movie that you might consider showing in class. It uses a fun example to explain how collaborative editing works in Wikipedia

What is Dropbox?

Here is a nice video created by Common Craft for Dropbox. It explains the cloud computing concept in non-technical terms. Basically, Dropbox lets you store files and synchronize folders on your computer with the Dropbox server. You can then share your folders across multiple computers, mobile devices and with other people.



I posted about the various file storage/sharing web applications a while ago. Each one has it's own perks. The biggest perk for Dropbox is that desktop folder that makes it really easy to place files for sharing without having to log in and upload anything. Another benefit is that there is no file size upload limit aside from the 2GB storage limit. This is a limitation that I came across with Box.net, which caps each individual file upload at 25MB on the free account, even though they offer 5GB of free storage space.

The other file sharing app that I wrote about was Google Docs. It works great for sharing Word, Excel and PPT files but I have had some trouble sharing video files. However, according to Vaughan-Nichols from ZDnet, it seems that Dropbox and Google Docs might join forces. Let's hope this will bring us something spectacular.

In my classes, Dropbox is especially handy when I want students to record audio or video files and share them with the class or to collaborate on projects where students need to share or exchange large files with one another.