Education was on the agenda today at Wikimania 2006, the second annual conference devoted to Wikipedia and its satellite projects. In a series of briefings held at Harvard University’s law school, scholars and students argued that wikis—Web sites that allow groups of users to add and edit content—can help teachers and professors harness the creativity of tech-savvy students.
Piotr Konieczny, a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, recommended that professors require students to create or edit Wikipedia articles as a classroom exercise. By turning students into Wikipedia editors, he argued, professors could encourage collaborative scholarship and alleviate the tedium of solitary paper-writing.
The professors might also be doing the Web site a favor, Mr. Konieczny said: "Perhaps having students all around the world contribute to Wikipedia is what we need to sustain its exponential growth."
At today’s keynote speech, Brewster Kahle—head of the Internet Archive—celebrated the success of the open-source encyclopedia. "Something big is going on," he said, noting that Wikipedia is now the world’s 15th most popular Web site. Mr. Kahle urged the encyclopedia to develop a system for helping its writers cite their own sources—a request that drew applause from many conference attendees.
The conference, which runs for three days, concludes tomorrow. —Brock Read
5 Responses to Dispatches From Wikimania
Carolyn Roosevelt - February 17, 2012 at 9:13 am
We can, but it’s a signal act of courage.
ccchron - February 17, 2012 at 7:27 pm
can we “feel this way anymore,” or do the ironic conventions of contemporary writing prevent it?
perhaps not, but if we are blocked from feeling patriotism of the destructive and self-annihilating kind expressed in the letter, it may be a good thing, even if there was a noble cause attached to this occasion (I mean ending slavery — which the letter writer notably doesn’t mention, as excerpted here). There are also the writer’s feelings toward “God,” and toward family. Can the capacity or tendency to ironize about these things be considered all under one question? I’m not sure.
seems to me we would also need to think about where the pervasive irony has come from, and then what might lead it to go away.
rmgosselin - February 18, 2012 at 9:58 am
I have a four page, hand-written letter from a student that begins: “I pray that when this letter reaches you, it finds you in the best of health and in good spirits. As for me, sadly, I’ve been forced to move to another prison and therefore can not have the pleasure of being in your class this fall semester.”
All the men in that class are good writers–some are superb–and their papers often have the same 19th Century rhetorical quality. But I don’t think a lack of irony is the issue om this case; their lives are full of irony of the severest kind, and they love to dissect it right in front of me. I think it’s because the maximum-security environment is a single text, without exit or hyperlink. Concentration is intense, because it’s vital. This focus on one acute reality provides a rhetorical and emotional link to Sullivan Ballou.
tkassam - February 18, 2012 at 1:42 pm
To your question “whether we can feel this way anymore” I would add “do we have relationships that foster such feelings – or sensibilities?”
davi9000 - February 18, 2012 at 6:52 pm
Lucy, I am new to this blog of Lingua Franca in Academe of The Chronicle of Higher Learning. I just registered and signed in after coming across The Chronicle website; so what I’m going to say will be “brief” because I hope to add an extended comment later. Sullivan Ballou’s letter to his wife is very touching. Yes, it is without irony and without any sentimentality. This excerpt of the letter you have quoted tells me quite a bit about this man: he was honourable, faithful, committed to and, therefore, unflinching in the cause of fighting for his country and what he considered to be his and the people’s identity with the evolving qualities and character of the life and the promise of a fledgling “American Civilization” which, I think he must have felt, was very hard in its coming and realization. (The irony is in our own minds and hearts in our own time because America’s essential identity, which is one of oneness, wholeness, or unity, is still in the throes of realization.) I think he was so, as well, with his undying love for his wife and his children. I think he did not just choose his country: I think he really chose both – his devotion to his wife and family AND his country, for without his country as he saw it his wife and family would be in danger, bereft of protection. The vision this man had for his country included the ensuring continuance of the life of his wife and children he dearly loved. This was his sacrifice as he knew he was facing death on the battlefield. His heart was sure and clear and for this he was and is to be praised. He was an articulate, knowing and intelligent man.
So: to your question. The answer, I think, is embedded in what you have said and quoted. Like so much else in the collective life of our tattered time, language is a casualty: it has suffered greatly from the forces of disintegration and disunity. This shows in our communication with one another and in the writing arts – I particularly see it in fiction. What has gone out of language in our time – in the way we use language – is what could be called the spiritual energy – we have lost our heart or soul connection with it – with which language has always been endowed. Language has both an inner spirit or reality and an external or outer surface manifestation and it is the same with our own reality. Susanne K. Langer related this in her book, Feeling and Form. Unity of language and expression (feeling) is surely a deep loss: we have forgotten the inner significance of the values or meanings of words (language) and this relates to the clouding of our own inner reality in meaning o significance.
Cursive writing. We use keyboards/computers, we have the Internet and Facebook and Twitter. This electronic media are extensions as tools of our hands, but this can and does take away the immediacy of long hand writing with ink on paper – it takes us away from the organic unity of body, mind, and spirit. Readers here may disagree, but I think what matters is our own hearts – faithfulness, honesty, sincerity, and commitment to our own identity which is in our hearts, but many of us don’t know what that identity is.
What happened to “brief”?
David Erickson