“It feels really powerful to have a forum to reach this many people and to provide them with potentially helpful information. I certainly don’t reach this many people during direct patient care or through publications in medical journals.” Everyone uses Wikipedia. Even our doctors.¹ So doesn’t it make sense to invite medical professionals into … Continued
“I started to see each Wikipedia page as less of a monolith and more as a creative, patchwork monster that perhaps hundreds of people were working on.” In an inter-institutional training course with the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (referred to henceforth as “the Alliance”), librarians have had the opportunity to collaborate closely with peers … Continued
“Our patients are using Wikipedia for their health questions, so the more health professionals we have editing, the better and safer information they get.”* What would the world look like if everyone had unfettered access to knowledge? Free knowledge resources like Wikipedia provide an opportunity to put power into the hands of everyone. The Society … Continued
From the very beginning, we’ve had our champions — students, faculty, and institutions alike — who have recognized what a Wikipedia writing assignment can achieve for student learning and for the world. Thanks to word-of-mouth, as well as the great work these individuals have accomplished using our resources (work that speaks for itself), more and … Continued
What if students could help raise the visibility of artists of color across decades through a single assignment? In the case of Dr. Nicole Strathman’s students at UCLA, learning how to write Wikipedia biographies for Latina artists is accomplishing just that. “In exploring the diverse artistic contributions, interventions, and aesthetic experiments by women in Latin … Continued
When you search for scientists online, Wikipedia is probably the first result. But did you know that 82% of Wikipedia biographies are about men? There’s a lot of work to be done to create pages for people who identify as women, African-American, Asian, Asian-American, Latinx, indigenous, and LGBTQ+. On Ada Lovelace Day this year, engineers, … Continued
What does it mean to have scientists of diverse identities represented in the largest, most-accessed encyclopedia worldwide? It means… scientists besides white men are historically recognized for their role in the advancement of STEM fields. correcting the stereotype of “what a scientist looks like” (did you think man with a lab coat when I said … Continued
Have you heard about Virginia Tucker? She was one of the first “human computers” in space engineering history. What about Katheryn Emanuel Lawson? She was one of the first female African American chemists who worked in Sandia National Laboratories. Or how about Margaret Hilda Harper? She was “one of the two physicians who described that coeliac disease in the pancreas and … Continued
When you gather a group of about 800 people to celebrate open knowledge, you can’t help but feel the excitement and hope in the room. Wiki Education staff were thrilled to join the Wikimedia community in Stockholm, Sweden for Wikimania 2019. We’ve accomplished a lot together as a community and it was a great to … Continued