Education/Newsletter/March 2015/Articles of interest in other publications
Wiki Gender Gap to Be Discussed in Morgantown
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In West Virginia University, a panel discussion titled “Where Are All the Women? Wikipedia’s Gender Gap” was held on March 4. The event is free and open to public to attend and is sponsored by the Reed College of Media and WVU Libraries. This article stresses the reason of holding such event by identifying the gender gap issue. having this large gap between male and female editors led to flourish of articles addressing men’s interests while those addressing women interests or introducing significant female figure were poor or absent.
Ready, set, edit!
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The Varsity, the student newspaper of the University of Toronto is running a campaign to invite students to edit Wikipedia. The author believes that almost all students use Wikipedia, whether, they like it or not, and regardless of how their professors would acknowledge citing it in research, they do refer to it as a first general source at least when there is no time. Based on that fact, students should be the highest contributors to Wikipedia as they are between the highest readers. On the other hand the article gives special attention to the gender gap on Wikipedia encouraging female students to help narrow it as well as working on the content gap that exists in articles about women.
Edit-a-thon aims to highlight notable women in Notre Dame
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One of several events held around the world to celebrate WikiWomen History Month and the International Women Day this month, in which Hesburgh Library’s Center for Digital Scholarship was open to students and faculty staff on Tuesday March 31 between 12 PM and 5 PM, to join old and new Wikipedia editors who planned to create and expand pages about prominent women in Notre Dame and south Bend history. Participants will work on a list previously prepared by the organizers with names of notable women of Notre Dame who don't already have an article on Wikipedia. All participants will have access to all the Library and University resources so that they can find the information needed for their editing session.
University of Amsterdam, FMG Wikipedia Editathon
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In the week of Open Education (March 9-13), an editathon was organized by The University of Amsterdam focusgroup Open Education. The editathon was scheduled to be held every afternoon of that week in the university campus. This editathon was expected to introduce academic staff to the rules of editing Wikipedia, highlight the impact of editing Wikipedia on both education and research and increase contributions regarding academic and research areas, particularly those of the UvA and FMG.
Wikipedia's medical errors and one doctor's fight to correct them
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Dr. James Heilman, an emergency room physician in Cranbrook, B.C, set a goal to edit and improve the accuracy of the top 200 medical articles on Wikipedia. since he realized that he could fix the misleading medical information on the internet through one of the largest online sources, he has been editing Wikipedia. Heilman says that many medical students use Wikipedia as their second most used information source, especially during their first years. He argues that doctors and medical students use the encyclopedia as it contains easy access information in simple language that remind them of what they periodically forget, all the more reason to encourage him to edit and improve the accuracy of those medical information on Wikipedia.
Creating Black History one Wiki page at a time
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In Feb 19, an Editathon was held at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center with the participation of educators, historians and students from Howard University to fill in the gaps in Wikipedia entries of some of the most significant African American figures. Howard Dodson, the director of the Spingarn Center, said that the absence of information about African American figures is a disservice for them. He also suggested that these editathons are held annually as they also serve as a learning tool for students in addition to their role of adding important historical facts to one of the most important sources on the internet.