All through high school teachers told us that Wikipedia is not a reliable source to get information. However, this idea completely changed when I myself learnt how to edit Wikipedia posts. I made my first ever Wikipedia account in an event that happened at York University’s Kaneff tower. It was an amazing event where I learnt all aspects of editing Wikipedia. I remember one of the organizers of the event telling me how she made her first ever Wikipedia account in an event similar to the one she was organizing that day. Becoming a wikipedian is a skill that I would have never learned if I had not taken the Applied Plant Ecology course (Biol 4095).
At first the thought of actually editing things online on such a large platform such as Wikipedia scared me. However, as I started exploring I genuinely started learning a lot of new things. The idea of editing things encouraged me to read about new plant ecology articles. Apart from this adding new things to articles is very exciting, but my favorite thing to do is edit grammatical errors in an article. I also truly like the idea of welcome virtual cookies that everyone gets on making a new Wikipedia account. Something new that I also learned through editing Wikipedia is how things work in a professional world. Becoming a wikipedian not only made me confident but it also gave me a lifelong asset in writing. At last but not the least I think everyone should at least once in their life become a wikipedian and I guarantee no one would ever regret it.
Wikipedia Edu
Recently my Applied Plant Ecology (Biol 4095) class gave me the opportunity to explore Wiki Edu. At first it was overwhelming to see the amount of information presented in my Wiki Edu account, however, as I started exploring I learned many new things about working with Wikipedia. The amazing tool had a few modules and exercises sorted in a weekly manner. Each week’s module helped explore Wikipedia step by step. It not only teaches us how to edit and add pages in Wikipedia, but rather also encourages everyone to be “BOLD” when doing so. I also learned about a few Wikipedia rules that I previously was not aware of. One of these rules was the difference between copyright violations and plagiarism. These two major topics might sound similar as they did to me, but after doing the modules and watching the video I realized the difference between the two. Apart from this I also learned what is considered a good source of reference when working on Wikipedia. Another great fact that I learned through the training modules was that Wikipedia is neutral and that editors are not allowed to present biased personal opinions or beliefs. This encourages editors to only add information backed up with a strong sources of reference. At the end of the training modules I was much more confident working with Wikipedia pages. Overall my experience with Wiki Edu was absolutely great as it was really helpful to go through the Wiki edu dashboard to edit pages on Wikipedia.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 