Wikipedia:WikiProject AP Biology Bapst 2012

A high school class in Maine - John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, Maine - will contribute images to Wikipedia article and the commons until June 7, 2012. The collective goal is to contribute excellent biology diagrams to the Commons and to corresponding Wikipedia articles. This is done as part of an Advanced Placement Biology course. The lead editor is Chris Packard. This project is inspired by the 2009 Wikipedia AP Biology Project. There are many basic and important diagrams missing from biological articles and we're doing our part to fix this.
 * Current Year's Project: WikiProject AP Biology Bapst 2013
 * Past Related Projects: WikiProject AP Biology 2010 & WikiProject AP Biology 2011


 * Students will work alone, there are 23 students so we should have 23 new images with captions and labels.
 * The time frame will be three weeks.
 * Students will be required to write a summary of why they select a topic; hopefully, eliminating obscure, random topic selections. They also must create labels and captions for their photos
 * They may add it to encyclopedia articles.
 * The best of the bunch will be submitted as Wikipedia featured pictures, see other candidates here

Feel free to discuss this project. Please notify me of any concerns; especially if they involve the behavior of my students on Wikipedia. With a little patience, this should be an inspirational experience for all.

Goals / Motivation

 * To improve the images in Wikipedia's coverage of Biology articles.
 * To encourage promising students to write, create, learn, and contribute volunteer efforts through a service learning project.
 * The dreaded “Research Project” is a standard hurdle for most AP Programs. Rightfully so, being that many college courses require such publications to validate your existence. This new approach to constructing a scientific document, is far more authentic and interesting. Rather than researching for a paper that is destined for the teacher's eyes and then a one way trip to the circular bin, let us contribute to the world-wide data base for others to benefit. I hope this will be an interesting and memorable project and assessment. It's funny I can remember a number of projects and papers I wrote during my own high school experience, but I can remember no tests whatsoever.

Contributions
As you upload your projects and add them to Wikipedia please add them to the gallery below. By adding a new line which begins with the word "File" and them follows the format of my sample image. Make sure to include your caption.

Contributors
Add your user name here. Just add this template with your username instead of the line:  .

Uploading
In order to complete the assignment and reap all the benefits of your hard work (such as a good grade) you MUST complete all of the following steps. If you need help, just ask.

How to, step by step
Step 1: Create a Wikipedia Global account by clicking "Login/create account" in the upper right hand corner of this page.

Step 2: Click here to use the WikiCommons File Upload Wizard

Step 3: If you didn't do it in the Wizard, categorize your image by adding a one or more   tags at the bottom of the page (fill in the name of the category in the _______.) You might use Category:Biology diagrams or something more specific like Category:Molecular biology or something else appropriate.

Step 4: If you didn't do it in the Wizard you should also now add your labels and your caption information in the description to your upload page in the Commons.

Step 5: Your image is now available in all Wiki Projects, including Wikipedia. So let's add it to the article! Go to the article you want to add your donated image to. In the top of the section of the article or the subheading you want to add the image to add something like this:

Step 6: Wow you've done it! Now you just have to turn in your work by adding it to gallery in the section above here called "Contributions". Just follow the model I provided in the first entry. Your caption will likely have to be shorter than your description, see the style advice below.

Style guides
To get past the stumbling blocks of editing Wikipedia, articles will have to conform to the Wikipedia style guides. The largest barriers are:

You can always ask for help at:
 * Manual of Style/Images - The basic overview of images (the Picture tutorial is also useful.
 * Manual of Style/Captions - Writing a good caption may be harder than you think.
 * Copyrights - Make sure to post a license on your image which releases all copyrights and makes it free use image AND don't use images from anywhere except the Commons if your image integrates other images.
 * File names - Pick the right name for your file.
 * Preparing images for upload - Pick the right file type (images created using entirely Google Draw should be saved as .SVG, whereas most other images you make will be saved as a .PNG in rare cases an a .JPG or .JPEG can be used)
 * Uploading images or WikiCommons Uploading Images - Do it right the first time (or just use the Wizard).
 * Ten things you may not know about images on Wikipedia - Kind of interesting.
 * The Help Desk

Writing a good image caption
There are several criteria for a good caption. A good caption:
 * 1) clearly identifies the subject of the picture, without detailing the obvious.
 * 2) is succinct (that means short).
 * 3) establishes the picture's relevance to the article.
 * 4) provides context for the picture.
 * 5) draws the reader into the article.

Different people read articles different ways. Some people start at the top and read each word until the end. Others read the first paragraph and scan through for other interesting information, looking especially at pictures and captions. For those readers, even if the information is adjacent in the text, they will not find it unless it is in the caption—but do not tell the whole story in the caption—use the caption to make the reader curious about the subject.

Another way of approaching the job: imagine you're giving a lecture based on the encyclopedia article, and you are using the image to illustrate the lecture. What would you say while attention is on the image? What do you want your audience to notice in the image, and why? Corollary: if you have got nothing to say, then the image probably does not belong in the article.

Images for the lead
It is very common to use an appropriate representative image for the lead of an article, often as part of an infobox. The image helps to provide a visual association for the topic, and allows readers to quickly assess if they have arrived at the right page. For most topics, the selection of a lead image is plainly obvious: a photograph or artistic work of a person, photographs of a city, or a cover of a book or album, to name a few.

Image selection for other topics may be more difficult and several possible choices could be made. While Wikipedia is not censored, as outlined in the above section on offensive images, the selection of the lead image should be made with some care with respect to this advice. Lead images are loaded and shown upon navigating to the page, and are one of the first things that readers will see. Editors should avoid using images that readers would not have expected to see when navigating to the page. Unlike other content on a page that falls below the lead, the lead image should be chosen with these considerations in mind.

Some advice on selecting a lead image include the following:
 * Lead images should be images that are natural and appropriate visual representations of the topic; they not only should be illustrating the topic specifically, but should also be the type of image that is used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works, and therefore what our readers will expect to see. Lead images are not required, and not having a lead image may be the best solution if there is no easy representation of the topic.
 * Lead images should be selected to be of least shock value; if an alternative image exists that still is an accurate representation of the topic but without shock value, it should always be preferred. For example, using an image of deportees being subjected to selection as the lead image at this version of Holocaust is far preferable to the appropriate images that appear later in the article that show the treatment of the prisoners or corpses from the camps.
 * Sometimes it is impossible to avoid the use of a lead image with perceived shock value if the topic itself is of that nature, for example in articles on various parts of human genitalia. It should be anticipated, through Content disclaimer, that readers will be aware they will be exposed to potentially shocking images when navigating to articles on such topics.

Planning and resources

 * Wikipedia tutorials for beginners
 * Editing commands cheatsheet
 * Getting started
 * The perfect article
 * Assessment
 * Article development
 * Peer Review

Talk pages
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