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| Wikipedia as a printed book? |
Just the other day I received the Fall 2010 issue of
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching (SMART), which contained an essay I wrote called "Wikipedia as Imago Mundi." The material should be familiar to those of you who know my interest in Wikipedia as a digital form of premodern collaborative knowledge production. When I wrote this for SMART, I worried about the fate of an article about digital textuality in an exclusively printed journal, but as it turns out, my fears were unfounded! Last night I received a kind e-mail from a reader of the article, who is not just a teacher of HEL, but also an active Wikipedian. He informed me that he had already spread the word about my article to
Wikipedia:Talk, which potentially expanded my audience a billion-fold (at least). Moreover, he informed me about an active community of Wikipedians who serve as
campus ambassadors about the proper use of Wikipedia. I encourage you to check it out. In any case, I find the generosity of this Wikipedian and the speed by which my article achieved a digital life to be incredibly telling about the effectiveness and efficiency of this form of knowledge sharing.
Alright, that person is me--shamelessly promoting fellow HEL teachers on Wikipedia. Love the title of your blog, BTW. Also BTW, I'm posting this next to a note on "Dutch oven," and since I happen to be Dutch, I'll take these as fighting words, sir. For a real palimpsest, in constant need of repair, check the history of the Wikipedia article, Dutch oven (practical joke).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I am posting here to tell you and the world at large that Wikipedia is greatly interested in editors such as yourself (whoever is reading this). Consider getting an account and start scratching on this palimpsest. Alex, one of the things you could do (maybe next time you're in HEL) is give a class assignment writing articles for WP. I've done that in a Freshman Comp class, with mixed results, but your students are undoubtedly more capable of producing content. Have a look, for instance, at the Wikiproject for Linguistics. We would appreciate your help.
And to your students: the correct answer is almost always "umlaut"--and if not, it's "ablaut." Good luck.
Please continue to be shameless, Dr. Aaij. At first, I didn't follow your "dutch oven" comment, but then I realized it was the Urban Dictionary's word of the day. Students love this site (but maybe there's an anti-Dutch bias there!). I plan to take your advice about asking HEL students to write/edit Wikipedia entries. If you're willing to share your Freshman Comp assignment, I would love to see it. I'm sure it would take some work on the front end to implement, but I don't want to be accused of having a microwave mentality.
ReplyDelete