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So one semester, I had a student who was writing
a report on the novel Frankenstein,
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and I have contributed to the article on Mary
Shelley, and to the article on Frankenstein.
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And whole swaths of the paper were plagiarized from
the article I wrote on Mary Shelley.
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So, I got to write in the margin, I know this is
plagiarized from Wikipedia, [whispers] because I wrote it on Wikipedia.
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My name is Adrianne Wadewitz.
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When I was a little kid, like seven or eight years old,
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I started reading big, long nineteenth-century novels,
and I fell in love with them.
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I wrote my dissertation on eighteenth-century British children's literature
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and I wanted to share what I had the
opportunity to learn about, with the world.
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When someone goes to see a film like Becoming
Jane, which is a film about Jane Austen,
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you know -- I want to know more about Jane Austen,
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and then they type it in to Google,
and they get the Wikipedia article,
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that they actually know what really happened to Jane Austen's life versus
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this fictionalization that happened in the film, because that film was a total fiction.
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One reason that I try to recruit professors
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to have them have students write actual articles in the classroom is
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we want to show students how to use Wikipedia productively,
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so one of the things I did was develop a Wikipedia writing assignment.
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so that you weren't writing your essays for me, the professor and
I was the only person who was going to see them.
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The world was going to see what you wrote and it
mattered what you wrote and how you wrote it,
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because millions of people were going to see what you wrote.
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So, whenever I have students put together an article
or add material to an article,
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I have them think about what does it mean to construct
an article out of a variety of sources
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and what kinds of sources are being used, and what
does that mean for our understanding of that topic?
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How is knowledge being constructed in this particular area?
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I've come across very informed amateurs on Wikipedia; that is what is so great,
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that people who are hobbyists who love a particular
topic, and then they start adding information,
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and that is what makes Wikipedia so great;
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it brings together both professionals and amateurs who
have a love for a particular topic.
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Director: Victor Grigas
Codirector: David Grossman
00:02:12.343,00:02:12.850
Producer: Zack Exley
Director of Photography: Pruitt Y. Allen
00:02:12.847,00:02:13.440
Video Photographers: Jack Harris, Adam Parr, Matthew Storck
00:02:13.443,00:02:13.950
Portrait Photographers: Adam Novak, Karen Sayre
00:02:13.946,00:02:14.470
Makeup: Melissa Klein
00:02:14.473,00:02:15.550
Interviewers: Alma Chapa, Jonathan Curiel, Stephen Geer, Dan
McSwain, Corey O'Brien, Frank O'Brien, Jacob Wilson
00:02:15.550,00:02:16.220
Production Coordinators: Megan Hernandez, Bryony Jones, Beatrice Springborn
00:02:16.220,00:02:16.700
Production Assistants: Toby Hessenauer, Kristin Rigsby
00:02:16.704,00:02:17.350
Video Editors: Justine Gendron, Victor Grigas, Jawad Qadir
00:02:17.353,00:02:17.770
Writer: Desirina Boskovich
00:02:17.773,00:02:18.520
Transcription Services: Kate Aleo, Michael Beattie, Karen Callier, Petro Leigh, Mimi
Li, Jacqui Pastor, Kristie Robinson, Brittany Turner, Susan Walling
00:02:18.519,00:02:19,000
English Closed-Captioning: AlanKelly VerbatimIT