Sessions
Editing Wikipedia Articles at the iEARN Conference
Rebecca Hodges
Lausanne Collegiate School
Dr. Rebecca Hodges is a teacher committed to world class education and the mission of iEARN. She received a Bachelor's in International Relations, Masters in Middle East Studies, and PhD in Cultural Anthropology and has been involved with iEARN since 2005. Her dissertation, "Transformation of Sympathies: Teaching for a Knowledge Economy...Read Full Bio
Rebecca Hodges
Dr. Rebecca Hodges is a teacher committed to world class education and the mission of iEARN. She received a Bachelor's in International Relations, Masters in Middle East Studies, and PhD in Cultural Anthropology and has been involved with iEARN since 2005. Her dissertation, "Transformation of Sympathies: Teaching for a Knowledge Economy in Amman, Jordan" was based on 14-months of fieldwork with teachers in Jordan supplemented by teacher training research and presentations in Oman, Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, and iEARN Qatar in 2013. She currently teaches International Baccalaureate Anthropology, history, and Theory of Knowledge at Lausanne Collegiate School in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.
Session Description
The presenter, Rebecca Hodges, will show attendees how she teaches her students to edit and contribute to the global collaborative encyclopedia, Wikipedia. The purpose of this session is to equip teachers to feel more confident, comfortable, and skilled to facilitate their students writing and editing Wikipedia articles. Rebecca will provide personalized walk-throughs to teachers who want to see how she trained students to work on Wikipedia in her classes and access to resources for training their own students. NO coding background needed!
Link to Tool: https://www.wikipedia.org/
What will educators learn and be able to do at the end of the session?
- Learn about Wikipedia articles
- Identity benefit of using Wikipedia in the classroom
- Feel more confident and skilled to facilitate writing and editing of Wikipedia articles
Additional Session Information
Rebecca's students have written over two dozen articles and contributed images, text, and citation to many more. With Wikipedia's new Visual Editor, students do not need any coding knowledge beyond basic word processing skills. Editing and writing Wikipedia articles teaches students many things about authentic online collaboration and the social process of collecting and sharing knowledge on specific topics and categories as well as source citation and copyright usage policies. Wikipedia is one of the most used websites in the world, available in many languages, and would be an excellent addition for iEARN project collaboration on any number of topics. Writing Wikipedia teaches students academic content, citation, clear writing, collaboration, how to accept feedback, an appreciation for facts and sources, and both a skepticism for truth claims and an understanding of where those truth claims come from.