May I be the first to say I am an avid user of Wikipedia, yet I have never thought of editing any page. Most often I use Wikipedia to discover and understand new topics and places I want to visit, or search for people. All of my Wikipedia searches often come from when I’m out and about doing random things. As I’ve progressed through school, I’ve come to see that teachers don’t accept Wikipedia as a reference for any assignment due to the fact that anyone can edit the pages.
When I first began looking through the Wiki Education training material, I was a bit unsure. I’ve never been very big into the technical side of computers so I really didn’t know much about programming and all the unique aspects that go into a page.
With millions of pages on Wikipedia, I felt as if I could never decide on which page to make additions too. Either I felt like the page had too much information already or that I wasn’t the most knowledgable or the best to work on a specific topic. After quite the debate with myself I followed behind my instructor Kristy (hi!) and made additions to the Boulder Creek High School page, where I often volunteer and recently graduated. Spending 4 year in high school and 3 summers before and after I felt like I was VERY knowledgable about the school. Upon looking at the Wikipedia page I was met with little to nothing regarding the school. I saw the high school’s location, population, sports, and departments. All of the information was correct, yet it didn’t showcase any of the great opportunities available. As I looked into the talk page I was met with no active dialogue and only two lonesome post dating from November 2016 and July 2017.
With no one seemingly interesting in chatting about Boulder Creek, I went on to talk about some changes I would deem interesting and beneficial to readers. As to be expected I was met with radio silence. No worries though, I went ahead to begin my additions to the site.
My first addition was adding a section for all the amazing clubs offered at the school. I remember when I was looking into high schools in my area I wanted the opportunity to be apart of the community. Boulder Creek offers a wide variety of clubs that can even compete on a state-wide level. With so many great options, I added it right below the ‘Sports’ section because the two are correlated as after school activities. I kept things simple by adding it as a bulleted list. I had the most trouble trying to correctly format the clubs into several columns per line, instead of one long list.
Further I added information regarding ‘Lil Jags Daycare’, an on campus daycare offered by the Childhood Development department. Often the daycare gets overlooked because it is within the high school. In the section I included information about the program, who runs it, and the opportunities high schoolers have if they are interested in going into the a similar profession. I believe that this is very insightful to those looking into the school; interestingly enough I have friends who have become teachers because they were able to gain an internship through Lil Jags Daycare. I sited information from a childcare reference website that held a lot of information that could be further looked into. Citations were much easier to add than I once thought, the computer essentially does all the work, how great!
Another little section I included was the ‘Feeder Schools’. Deer Valley Unified School District is a large area offering several elementary, middle, and high schools. With more than one high school in the general area, knowing the schools that general fed into Boulder Creek would be helpful to those unsure of the area. If I’m being completely honest, it took me so long to make edits, I was so worried that I’d mess up previous information or destroy the page!
Lastly, I included information on the campus store, ‘The Spot’. As a previous employee and manager I am very knowledgeable about The Spot, which is often overlooked at the school. Offering an array of products any student might need, it’s nice to know that it is there. The Spot also offers internships to students looking for high school and potentially college credit. A great opportunity that others should be aware of. I often kept rewording my writing, as I wanted to sound as professional as possible.
Overall, I felt like I really got the hang of editing and adding to a Wikipedia page. While I see myself as an above average writer, I definitely never saw myself as someone who can edit a Wiki page; I feared that my writing just wouldn’t be good enough and I couldn’t do it. I believe all my edits got added to the page so I was actually really extra proud of myself! This assignment went well over my expectations and I’m actually looking forward to looking into more articles that need editing for future. To anyone who reads this and is either completing this assignment or in general thinking about editing a page, GO FOR IT! Seriously, if I can do it, you can do it too! Don’t overthink things as hard as I did and go change the world, or at least, a Wikipedia page.
