Wikipedia, one of the most visited websites on the World Wide Web, is a great source for quick on topic facts regarding ones less academically orientated endeavors, meaning it should not be used as a source when composing scientific literature. It is open access, meaning anyone can create an account and join the Wikipedia editing community in growing the encyclopedias reaches. I was certainly excited to be able to able to join the Wikipedia community for a second time and to be able take the knowledge I have gained in my studies in applied plant ecology and share it with literally the entire world because that is the reach and audience of Wikipedia. Whilst doing research for a previous assignment in the course, I came across the United Nations convention on Biological Diversity and immediately formed an interest in the programs and activities under the convention. I became somewhat of an expert after sifting through dozens of pages of official UN publications. So when it came time to editing a Wikipedia for this course, I knew I had to find a way to include some element of my newly gained knowledge. I first started to look at existing Wikipedia pages related to plant ecology, particularly shifting towards conservation as a key term in my search as plant ecology and applied plant ecology are heavily integrated with the many forms of sustainable conservation. Looking first at the “Conservation” and “Convention on Biological Diversity” until I came across the Sustainable forest management page. It was on this page that I realized it was lacking in many part and to my surprise it made little mention of REDD the indicative I looked at earlier that was solely based on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. That being said I took it upon myself to create another account and first add a sizable bit of information regarding REDD under the “Regional action” section of the page since REDD was formed for developing nations in particular to take advantage of. I also noticed that the “Regional action” section only mentioned the sustainable forest management work done in the United States, Indonesia and Russia. Seeing this, I though Canada deserved a mention as well as many fantastic incentives are current taking place. So I again did some research and added an “In Canada” subsection next to my paragraph on sustainable forest management done in developing countries named “In the developing world”. There I gave a run-down of how sustainable forest management is done in Ontario in particular. Overall the experience was very rewarding as I contributed to the world largest online open source encyclopedia while increased my own knowledge in the process. I would say the only challenging aspect of this interesting experience was adding in the proper references with regard to the way Wikipedia’s website likes it to be coded so that the additions are maintained and not taken down.

Incorporating Wikipedia Edu

I was given the opportunity to create a Wikipedia Edu connection to my actual Wikipedia account. At first it looked as if it was going to be a huge leap as the format of the website and the way it presented it self, appeared to be much more complicated than the actual Wikipedia page that I was used to, that some may describe as outdated by today’s website standards. However, upon playing around with the various functions I realized just how easy it was to navigate and took it upon myself to try and fully integrate both assets. Wikipedia Edu is a great tool; it has some fantastic modules that I completed with excitement as I learned many new things that I was eager to add to my next pages or improve on my current articles. It also provides fantastic facts about the group activity at the top of the home page, I was very surprised to see that the pages edited by my fellow classmates and I had over one million views on that pages in total. Facts likes these put things into perspective, of the outreach capable in today’s world. Furthermore, I was never given the opportunity to learn how to add picture media, but the modules on Edu managed to show me how, and the best part of the entire experience is how nicely it teaches you. They incorporate great short video that instruct you step by step, into their simple slides that pack a lot of information yet remain uncluttered, so you are not overwhelmed. I also found the use of mini quizzes to be very useful as I could test my knowledge gained through the module, there were a couple instances that I got the questions wrong and I was surprised since to me the answer I selected made total sense. However, the quiz corrected me with a reason that made me understand the Wikipedia point of view which is different from the mentality that I am used to. The mentality of expressing personal opinion is gone and Wikipedia Edu teaches you what is expected from Wikipedia, unbiased knowledge gained from a reputable source. Plagiarism is another topic touched on heavily the training modules and they also taught me a lot, I was presented with different forms of plagiarism that I was not aware of and made me rethink my previous mindset on the topic with an emphases on  only retrieving the overall picture from the source and mix it with my own words and ideas to drive a point, not that I had not done so before. Overall, it was an effective tool due to the curtail information presented and its overall simplicity, and I will preform as many tasks as I can though the Dashboard.