Unit 4: How to contribute

knowledge!

WIKIPEDIA entries

WHY?

• “With a traditional assignment, your only audience is often your professor, or at most your professor and your classmates. I really liked the fact that this assignment gave me an opportunity to write for a broader audience and make a valuable contribution to a resource that I often use myself.”

• — Joseph Lapka, San Francisco State University

WHAT’S THE ASSIGNMENT?

• Create your own Wikipedia edits and contributions related to Harlem Renaissance Literature using Crisis Magazine 1919-1934

• Write up your work (formal write up)

What do you mean by “MAKE AN EDIT”?

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Okeechobee

• MY EDIT – Hurston refers to the lake as "Big Lake Okechobee, big

beans, big cane, big weeds, big everything". The description speaks to the migrant African American laborers working in this area during the agricultural season in the 1920s. [27]

WHAT???? Who cares?

• Well, because who wants to leave it into everyone else’s hands to decide what knowledge is important or not?

• Don’t you want to have a say in how knowledge gets created?

• What if your own history or ideas that are important to you are left out?

• Whoever gets to create knowledge has power

Poor Elise!

• Survey Graphic 1925 was one of the most important publications of the Harlem Renaissance! But all that we seem to remember is Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, Barnes, Cullen, Johnson, etc.

• Where’s Elise Johnson McDougald…?? Didn’t she have an essay in there, too?

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=elise+johnson+mcdougald&go=Go

Okay, so where do I start?

REQUIRES EXPANSION!

THIS IS CALLED A STUB!

A STUB?

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Negro

What can I edit?

• Add information • Edit information• Add citations• Add images• Write a whole article (more difficult)

Where do I start?

• The Crisis! • http://books.google.com/books?id=zFkEAAAA

MBAJ&dq=Crisis+Magazine+1923&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1

Holiday Reading!

• 1) Student training on Wikipedia (MANDATORY)—see unit 4

• 2) The Crisis—skim & discover & research 1919-1923

• 3) Be prepared to jump into wiki work next time!