User talk:Lynndance

Hello, Lynndance, and welcome to Wikipedia! I am Ssilvers, an "Online Ambassador" with the education outreach program. Here are a few useful links for new Wikipedians:

If you'd like some help with editing, you can ask me on my talk page. If you need other help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, post a question at the Help Desk, or ask me.

Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. It is helpful to read the most recent entries at the bottom of the talk page of an existing article before making major changes to it, especially if the article is a fairly long one.

Again, welcome! -- Ssilvers (talk) 15:44, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia in your classroom

Hello, Professor! Thank you for your message on my talk page, and thank you for joining Wikipedia. You and your students can make a big difference in how well dance is covered in this encyclopedia, and at the same time, the students can learn a lot about researching and writing well-sourced material about dance subjects and communicating clearly to a general readership. I have taken a quick look at dance coverage in Wikipedia, and there is a distinct need to improve the quality of our articles about dance, choreography, dancers and dance music. Here are some high-quality dance articles on Wikipedia: Sylvia (ballet), Master Juba, Hip-hop dance and Neila Sathyalingam.

Please let me know more about the scope of your project, your schedule and how you would want to structure the course. For example, how will you choose the articles to work on; how will students choose/be assigned articles, and what will the goals be for each. I have helped a lot of people to learn their way around Wikipedia, and you really must learn by doing - that is, by actually making edits on Wikipedia to gain fluency with the software. Therefore, I strongly recommend that students be required to make a series of weekly (or more frequent) edits, beginning with very simple ones, and working up to adding sophisticated information with properly cited footnotes. The Ambassador can then review the students' edits and give them feedback. Looking forward to hearing from you. -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:28, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed course instructions

I'm on the "edit" page. I don't see a way to upload a document (yes, I see how to upload images), so I guess I have to copy and paste the assignment here:

TDF 331, Dance History – Wikipedia Assignment
Spring 2012 – Professor Lynn Brooks

Remember that our course focus is the History of Western Theatre Dance, renaissance to the present, which is the framework you should maintain when undertaking this assignment.

A. Look at the Wikipedia page on History of Dance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_history. Read it closely and evaluate it based on these observations:

Citations
Sources
Focus (styles, people, dance types, geographic locations, time periods, context, etc.). What is covered? What is missing?
Text and visual image balance
Depth of coverage
Links
Anything else that seems important to you to note.

B. and C. Follow any two of the links in this article (choose links appropriate to our course). Apply the same set of questions and criteria listed above to evaluating each of those pages.

D. Create a summary statement assessing the Wikipedia coverage of Western theatre-dance history based on your observations. You may follow the question/criteria list given above or articulate your assessment in another format.

E. Create a plan for your contribution to improving this coverage. Your plan must be discussed and approved by the professor to ensure that it is realistic and adequate to the expectations of the assignment. Examples: 1) Contribute 5-7 citations to substantiate (or not) claims in the articles you have selected.
2) Provide information on a red link (red links are areas Wikipedia would like to cover but has not yet had sufficient information to do so).
3) Fill out a subject covered too superficially or not at all (not even in a red link) in Wikipedia.
4) Change and/or correct information in a current article that is incomplete or inaccurate.
5) Something else, of your own devising.

Calendar:

Jan. 26 - Bring in your notes and comments on your initial Wikipedia research, part A of assignment, with thoughts on what you’ll focus on for parts B and C. Although these are notes, prepare to hand in a copy to the teacher.
Jan. 31 – Start work on completing your contributions to part A.
Feb. 9 - Bring in notes for parts B and C of Wikipedia assignment. Again, submit a copy of the notes to the teacher.
Feb. 23 - Part D due. This should be a formal, well-written paper of about 2-3 pages in length.
Mar. 20 – Part E plan is due. You should have undertaken considerable research so that you know if this plan is realizable.
Apr. 10 – Part E information in fully realized form due to the teacher today.

Please let me know your feedback on this as a possible assignment for my class. Thank you SO much! -- Lynndance (talk) 22:44, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

Dear User:Lynndance, thanks for posting. Please post new messages at the bottom of the page (or at the bottom of threads). You can indent by putting a colon (:) at the left margin

Like this. Please do not use people's real names on Wikipedia. It is one of the most important privacy requirements in our community that we only refer to editors by their user names. For example, please refer to me as ssilvers or just ss. Give me a few moments, and I will review the above. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:49, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, having made your first post to the talk page, you are beginning to learn about editing Wikipedia. I have formatted your above post. Take a look at this edit, to see how I made the changes. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:59, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a quick guide to some editing tools: Wikipedia:Cheatsheet. See also Editing Policy. Then see the links that I left you above under the "Welcome" message, especially WP:V, WP:OR and WP:N. -- Ssilvers (talk) 23:04, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback

Here is some feedback on your course instructions above:

You wrote: "I guess I have to copy and paste the assignment here". Yes, all discussion should take place on the talk pages for either the users or the articles. That is how we concentrate all discussion in one place so everyone can see it and participate. Plus, using the talk pages helps new editors to learn how to edit Wikipedia.
"renaissance to the present". You can use Wiki-links on talk pages to give more value to your content. For example, click on these two blue links: "renaissance to the present".
You wrote: "1. Citations; 2. Sources". How are you distinguishing between citations and sources? Do you mean "in line citations" as distinguished from book-length references that are listed at the bottom? As you can see, our software permits (and our policies encourage) people to refer to their sources at the end of the relevant sentence or quote, and those citations are then shown as a number in the text that links to a footnote near the bottom. However, we usually list out book length sources near the bottom, and then the in-line cite can be a short form. Let's say Balanchine wrote a book that could be cited as follows: Balanchine, George. Modern Dance Is Not as Good as Ballet, Penguin (1987) ISBN 01577344567. The full citation should go at the bottom, while in the text, the book could be referred to in a short form, for example, after a quote like this: "Ballanchine preferred Ballet to Modern Dance."^[1]

Notes

^ Balanchine (1987), p. 149

Anyhow, if you meant a different distinction between "citations" and "sources", what did you mean? See also WP:CITE.

You wrote: "...styles, people, dance types...." What is the difference between "styles" and "dance types"? Also, should "music" be considered? Isn't dance history, to some extent, related to musical changes and innovations? What about theatrical technology and innovations? For example, how have dance and choreography styles adapted to the differences among dance halls, ballet stages, Broadway theatres, tiny Off-Broadway stages, outdoor spaces, television and film, etc?
"Text and visual image balance". In addition to text and visual images, we can embed sound files. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nutcracker#The_music
"Depth of coverage". How is this different from the breadth of coverage that you ask about under #3 "Focus"? Should you add a more detailed description to give the students a more specific idea of what they should look for?
Links. We have a detailed policy on this. See WP:External links. The students should evaluate whether the "External Links" section includes the most important websites concerning the history of dance that are not already used as footnotes or sources.
Talk page. The students should also read the article's talk page, to see what major issues have been discussed recently about improving the article. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:History_of_dance
You wrote: "D. Create a summary statement assessing the Wikipedia coverage of Western theatre-dance history based on your observations." This seems too broad. There are thousands of articles on Wikipedia related to theatre dance history. Do you mean something more specific?
E. Student plans.

"2) Provide information on a red link...." You should not encourage the students to start a new article, unless it is an article that you see as glaringly absent from the encyclopedia. New editors should begin by improving existing articles. Starting a new article is actually blocked for new editors (the reasons will become very clear over time). If it is a project that you think is a high priority for the encyclopedia, I can start the article briefly myself and let the students improve it.

"3) Fill out a subject covered too superficially ~~or not at all (not even in a red link)~~ in Wikipedia." Same comments as above

"4) Change and/or correct information in a current article that is incomplete or inaccurate." Note that when any additions are made, it is essential that citations be added to the sources of the information at the same time that the new information is added. See WP:V and WP:OR. -- Ssilvers (talk) 00:38, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Calendar:
As I noted near the top of this page, it is essential for new editors, including you, to edit on a weekly or more frequent basis, to gain some fluency with the software. Their FIRST week, the students should be required to register a username and write something on their user page and talk page. See my user page User:Ssilvers for ideas about what can go on a userpage.

Jan. 26 - Bring in your notes and comments.... -- They should also discuss what edits they have made and what, if any problems/frustrations they encountered in using the Wikipedia software. They should, ASAP, try to make a minor edit on an article - something minor, like fixing a punctuation or spelling error, and practice leaving an edit summary and previewing a page. The following week, they should learn to add a properly formatted in-line reference to an article. The ambassador (whether it is me or someone else), can help the student with these exercises, and I would be happy to leave examples of how to do it on your talk page for them to see.
Jan. 31 – Start work on completing your contributions to part A. - Do you mean that they should make live edits to the History of Dance article? That's great, but this is an ambitious idea. The students will need considerable practice at making small discreet edits before attempting major edits. They should start making small edits ASAP and work up to something that involves major formatting changes. Along the way, they should be encouraged (required?) to contact the ambassador to discuss any questions/difficulties that they have with editing and the software. It may be difficult for many of them without an in-class ambassador, but we can try to set up some kind of live chat...
Feb. 23 - Part D due. This should be a formal, well-written paper of about 2-3 pages in length. -- As noted above, I think you need to clarify/narrow the scope of this.
Apr. 10 – Part E information in fully realized form due to the teacher today. -- How does this relate to the timing of their executing the changes live on Wikipedia.

You need to start editing Wikipedia articles to gain fluency with the software. Whenever you have questions, small or large, post them to my talk page so that I can help you through them. Without a campus ambassador, you will need to be able to help your students with the software and our editorial and content policies, and you won't be able to do that until you become familiar with them yourself. After you have read the links in the Welcome message at the top of this page, ping me at the bottom of my talk page, User talk:Ssilvers, and we can discuss your questions. I believe that this will be a very rewarding project. All the best! -- Ssilvers (talk) 00:58, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all the feedback. I just don't know if I can handle this kind of work in this course, since classes start Tuesday and I feel unprepared myself to do this work, so how can I expect the students to take it on? I fear that we'd be spending more time learning about how to edit Wikipedia than learning about doing dance history research. If I were a whiz at Wikipedia myself, that would help, but clearly, I'm a total newbie. I didn't realize the intensity of this process.

Also, every time I open my email now, I find 30 messages from Wikipedia about changes to this page. It's overwhelming. Most of them seem to be referring to the same set of changes, so I don't know why I get multiple messages, but I don't like my inbox getting so jammed with messages. I think I need to rethink this idea, tempting though it seemed initially. Thank you for pointing out the nature of the focus required for this kind of project.Lynndance (talk) 03:43, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can turn off the e-mail notifications by clicking on the "My preferences" tab at the top and unclicking the box that says "E-mail me when my user talk page is changed". -- Ssilvers (talk) 08:25, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I sense that the a new set of standards that courses must now meet to officially join the "Education Program" has effectively dampened your interest. If I may help you and your students in any UNofficial way, as Shambassador, do post a note at User talk:Wetman. --Wetman (talk) 21:30, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Balanchine (1987), p. 149

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