User talk:AEG English4994

Re: Project Page for Educational Project?
Such pages are usually created the hard way: from bottom up. You can look at history of the page to see how it evolved, you can also copy and paste it to your own project page and then modify as needed. See also Help:Starting a new page. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 02:58, 16 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Very straightforward reason for deletion - you had blanked the page, which is always taken as an implicit request for deletion; another editor noticed the blanking and tagged it as a speedy, and I deleted it. It's always a good idea to work in a sandbox until you're ready jimfbleak (talk) 06:34, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

You're Welcome!
Due to the peculiarities of our licensing process and the procedures we have built up around it, name changes are difficult. I recommend that you create a new account and begin using it. Edit the user page of this (old) account to point to the new account and explain why. (It is technically possible to change your account name, but it's sufficiently difficult that we appear to reserve it for severe situations.) There is no particular penalty or overhead associated with abandoning an account. Once you have your new account, I recommend that you immediately go through the "Single user login" (WP:SUL) process to create the same account on all of the Wikimedia wikis. You may not think you will ever edit on one of the other wikis, but it's a lot easier to do this now while you are thinking about it than whe you are in the heat of editing and need suddenly to add a picture to commons or add a source to wikisource. Each of your students will need to create a separate account here at wikipedia, and each of them should also create a SUL, for the same reason I failed to set of a SUL originally, and regretted it later. -Arch dude (talk) 14:10, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

About your approach
I heartily approve of your approach: teach and learn at the same time when appropriate. This of course implies that you are not afraid to admit mistakes in front of your students.

Note that you are working in a new medium. Wikipedia is not a traditional encyclopedia in any sense, and it is not an academic journal, not even an online journal. Wikipedia is so new that our rules, philosophy, methodology, and culture are still rapidly evolving. We are experimenting and adding and discarding elements of each of these at a fairly frightening rate. You and you students need to be prepared for this. The whole idea of change is part of the landscape, so you cannot simply learn the rules and then treat each change as an annoying occasional event.

I suspect that you will spend a lot higher percentage of your time on non-content issues than you currently anticipate. This is both normal and necessary. Even so I'm fairly sure that the non-content ("overhead") time is lower for Wikipedia than for other forms of "publication."

One huge difference: the pages that you and your students create will not belong to you. They will be edited by anyone. This may include vandals, children, sexist males, sexist females, people with odd agendas, etc. You and your students will have no more (and no less) right to edit the articles than anyone else. Among other things, you might want to think about how you will evaluate your student's efforts in light of this. -Arch dude (talk) 14:28, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

If you ever need some help...
By far the most successful teachers who have been able to put together a wikipedia teaching project have been User:Jbmurray and User talk:JimmyButler. If you ever need any assitance or advice, I would talk to these two people because they have managed to succeed where many others have failed. Remember (talk) 14:29, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Arundhati Roy
I removed the semi-protection a couple of days ago so you should have no problems. (But, do read WP:BLP first!) --RegentsPark (Maida Hill Tunnel) 01:44, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
 * About how to go about it. As you can imagine, the Arundhati Roy article attracts editors who feel strongly about her (both in a positive as well as in a negative sense). So, be aware that whatever you add may become contentious and could be a source for frustration. However, if you follow a few general rules it'll be easier to get community support for any edits that you make and wikipedia can become a rewarding experience. Always ensure that anything that could be even remotely contentious is reliably sourced; try to maintain a balance in the article by not overweighting information; clearly mark opinions as opinions and include them only if it is contextually necessary (this is particularly important in a biography article); and always try to keep your personal opinions out of the article. Enjoy! --RegentsPark (Maida Hill Tunnel) 02:58, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I had to semi-protect the Arundhati Roy page. If your students have difficulty editing (I'm not sure how long they've been registered), let me know and I'll unprotect it. --RegentsPark (My narrowboat) 16:36, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia assignments chat time
Please take a look at the proposed time for the chat on Wikipedia classroom assignments works for you, or propose another one.--ragesoss (talk) 04:34, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah. My Skype name is ragesoss; add me as a contact sometime beforehand, so I'll be able to add you to the group.--ragesoss (talk) 16:24, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * We're on Skype now. Are you on? Awadewit (talk) 22:33, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Your essay
I have just read User:Awadewit/TeachingEssay. Bravo! Very very interesting!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 07:10, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much! And thanks for taking the time to read it! --AEG English4994 (talk) 20:13, 11 June 2010 (UTC)