The event will start with a presentation which gives the Wikipedia community perspective on the following:
What is Wikipedia's place in the media?
To what extent does Wikipedia inform people making decisions?
How can Wikipedia be compared to other media channels?
What is known about how Wikipedia is used?
How does one edit Wikipedia?
What is Wikipedia's quality control system?
Following the presentation, anyone may ask any question about Wikipedia to get answers or demonstrations. Following this, it will be time for a Wikipedia "editathon", which is an event in which a group of people edit together. Desktop view, not mobile access, is preferred for this exercise, but come regardless. At the editathon, this is the goal:
Come to the event with some published source of good information
Identify a Wikipedia article where you think information from that source should go
In your own words, take information from your source and add it to the Wikipedia article
Hopefully everyone at the event will add at least 1-3 sentences in the time we have. After making additions, since Wikipedia is public, participants will review the accuracy and quality of classmate's edits. As we leave, participants will be invited to check back on Wikipedia after some time (3-7 days) to see if there is any online community response to anyone's contributions.
All participants will gain the ability to describe the nature of Wikipedia as a communication channel
Participants will get experience translating information from their favorite publications into Wikipedia's layman style
The information submitted to Wikipedia will be read by the public. Wikipedia readers will be better informed based on this event's contributions.
After some months, the participants will get a report on the number of pageviews to the Wikipedia articles which the class edited. At any time after the event anyone may visit the tracking dashboard to check readership, a measurement of content added, and other statistics.
All of these organizations endorse this classroom outreach. Your facilitator, user:bluerasberry, does not represent any of them except Consumer Reports. The nature of the support is as follows -