Well, at the time of enrolling in ALES 204 or even at the start of it all, enrolling in an Agriculture degree at the University, I did not expect to be educating my blog followers about editing a Wikipedia article! Editing a Wikipedia article was a recent assignment which would contribute to our ALES 204 personal ePortfolio at the end of the semester.
Knowing little information about the website Wikipedia and its useful purposes, I found that becoming a Wikipedia editor an experience full of learning. To start of the assignment I, as an editor, had to choose a Wikipedia "stub" to edit. A stub being an article located within the Wikipedia website that is deemed to short to provide encyclopaedic coverage of the subject. Being raised on a cow/calf operation I have accumulated a great interest in the cattle industry. With an adequate background in the cow/calf area of the industry I wanted to use this assignment in order to gather more knowledge about the rest of the industry.
Cannulated Cow |
Screen Capture Of My WIkipedia Page |
Jessica, my ALES 204 teacher designed this assignment for students to easily see how information on WIkipedia can be edited by anyone. Here is Jessica's response to the question "As a teacher, do you recommend the students at the University Of Alberta to use Wikipedia as a resource with the varying reliability of information."
Dr. Jessica Laccetti's response to my tweet |
Thanks for tuning into my blog this week, and feel free to check out some fellow ALES 204 students blogs such as Rosie's blog post on a gelbvieh cattle breed that is relatively new to North America or Jami's blog post on her experience of becoming a Wikipedia editor of a article on blackleg, a disease that effects mostly cattle and sheep.
Editing a wikipedia article, or even using wikipedia is something I did not think I would be doing in a ALES class as well. I was rather intrigued when I first learned about our wikipedia assignment, but once completing it I realize the importance of critically analyzing what you are reading to check for validity. Jessica's answer to your tweet makes perfect sense, you always need to think about what you are reading and make sure to back it up with a scholarly journal or a few different sources.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea that cannulated cows existed! Now I know a little bit more on the topic because of your contribution to wikipedia. I agree that updating wikipedia pages is a great way to expand our knowledge on certain topics in our field that we might not know as much about. Especially if you use peer reviewed articles to research the topic in order to become "expert" enough to update the topic on wikipedia.
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