1 Million Edits, TED-ED, and Hall of Fames
It seems like forever since I've sat down and blogged.....and yet at the same time it seems I spend all day blogging. Between school, COETAIL, and students I'm spending more time then ever in Wordpress.
But tonight I'm closing everything else to reflect on some articles lately that I can't get out of my head.
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Wikipedia has its first 1 million editor. Stop and think about that for a minute. That's pretty amazing that someone would take the time to sit down and make edits....for free...for others to use. What worries me most is Wikipedia is seeing a decline in the number of editors yet the website is as popular as ever.....and all I can think about is are we creating a generation of takers and not givers? How many teachers have taught the true meaning of giving on the Internet.....or actually given themselves. We all take, I haven't met a teacher yet that hasn't gotten a resource from the web, yet very few share and give back. The generation in our schools today are some of the heaviest users of Wikipedia and I hope that we're challenging them to give back at least some of what they are taking. Wikipedia is a project waiting to be using in every subject I can imagine. There has to be away to use it in our schools.
Many schools, including mine, have expectations that students put in community service hours. I wonder if there is a way to count Wikipedia editing as community service. I'd love to be on that interview:
"What community did you support?"
"A community of about 1 billion people."
TED-ED launched their new site recently which has some interesting features and an interesting twist to the flip approach. I need to dig into the site more to see how it all works but from the readings I've done and exploring the website it looks be be a pretty useful resource. But teachers will be the ultimate judge of that!
And lastly the Internet officially received its own Hall of Fame. Great to see those who invented this thing be recognized. It has been fun to read through some of their bios. It's great to see people like Raymond Thomlinson who years ago looked down at his computer keyboard for a symbol that would separate the username from the domain host. He needed a symbol that wasn't in use yet and choose the @ sign. Forever changing the world of communication. There is a great article that I re-read every once and awhile called How the Web Was Won that talks a lot about the pioneers of the Internet and the early days. A great historical read if you are interested.