Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Courses/Children's Literature Fall11 (Adrianne Wadewitz)/Timeline

Aug 22: Wikipedia essentials

 * Presentation by myself and Campus Ambassador (~15 minutes)
 * Introduction to how Wikipedia will be used in the course
 * Handout: Welcome to Wikipedia

Aug 29: Basic editing, part 1

 * Presentation by Campus Ambassador and myself in a computer lab (~1 hour)
 * Basics of editing: sandbox, headers, bulleted and numbered lists, internal and external links, bold and italics, preview, edit summary, history, talk pages, basics of help
 * Handouts and videos: Video on creating an account, Talk pages tutorial video, Wikimarkup cheatsheet

Sept 5: Exploring Wikipedia

 * Assignment 1 due
 * Create a Wikipedia account, play in the public sandbox, create a userpage on the Simple English Wikipedia, sign up on the list of students on the course page, and read Five pillars.

Sept 12: Sourcing and community norms

 * Presentation by myself and Campus Ambassador (~45 minutes)
 * Overview of sample article, neutral point of view, no original research, verifiability, how to write Simple English
 * Handouts and videos: Referencing handout, Plagiarism handout, Citing sources tutorial video, Evaluating Wikipedia article quality

Sept 19: Basic editing, part 2

 * Presentation by myself and Campus Ambassador (~30 minutes)
 * Basics of editing: Adding images to articles, uploading images, adding references
 * Handouts and videos: RefToolbar citation tool tutorial video, Referencing: Wikicode handout, Uploading images handout, Uploading files to Wikimedia Commons video


 * Assignment 2 due
 * To practice editing and communicating on Wikipedia, introduce yourself to one of the class's Online Ambassadors and leave a message for a classmate on their talk pages.

Sept 26 – Oct 10: Museum visits

 * Assignment 3 due (Sept 26)
 * Improve the clarity of a sentence or two in Bambi (keeping How to write Simple English in mind) and leave a comment on the "Talk" page of Nancy Drew advising future editors about how they could improve the article.


 * September 26: Visit to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis


 * October 3: Guest lecture by Cathy Hanaker on how to write for children

Oct 17: Wikipedia article selection

 * Assignment 4 Due: Choose one of the Wikipedia articles from the list provided by the instructor. Add your username and article to the table below, following the sample.

Oct 24: Bibliography

 * Assignment 4 Due: Research the topic of your article and create a bibliography of at least 10 scholarly peer-reviewed books and articles that could potentially be used as sources for your article. Place this list of sources on the talk page of the article, alerting the editing community there that you plan on improving the article. The Children's Museum has made this page as a place for us to start finding resources.

Oct 31: First edits

 * Assignment 5 Due: If you are starting a new article, write a 3-4 sentence summary with a citation and send it to the instructor for approval. After it has been approved, create the article and post an outline of the article as you are going to write it to the talk page.
 * Assignment 5 Due: If you are improving an existing article, post an outline of your revisions to the talk page.
 * Work with classmates and Online Ambassadors to fix any major transgressions of Wikipedia norms.
 * Continue research in preparation for expanding your article.

Nov 1–14: Editing

 * Add material to the the article per your outline, following the conventions of Wikipedia. Be sure to post to the talk page to alert the community to your intentions. Try to edit in small increments to avoid procrastination. By the end of the semester, you need to have added at least 1500 words to the article.

Nov 14–28: Peer review

 * Due by Nov. 14: Peer review two of your classmates' articles. Leave suggestions on the article talk pages.
 * Due by Nov. 21 Copy-edit the two reviewed articles.
 * Due by Nov. 28 Make edits to your article based on peers' feedback.

Dec 5: Wikipedia contributions due

 * Students have finished all their work on Wikipedia that will be considered for grading.

Dec 12: Reflective essay due

 * Turn in your reflective essay on Oncourse

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