Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Carleton University/Women Directors (Winter 2016)
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- Course name
- Women Directors
- Institution
- Carleton University
- Instructor
- Laura Horak
- Subject
- Film Studies
- Course dates
- 2016-01-11 00:00:00 UTC – 2016-04-08 23:59:59 UTC
- Approximate number of student editors
- 42
Timeline
Week 1
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 11 January 2016 | Tuesday, 12 January 2016
- In class - Mon, Jan 11
- Introduction
- Overview of the course
- Introduction to how Wikipedia will be used in the course
- Assignment - Week 1 Wikipedia Reading
- In class - Tues, Jan 12
- In-class Wikipedia Workshop
Bring your laptop or tablet to class!
During class, you will work on your first Wikipedia tasks in class: creating an anonymous username, registering for the Wiki Ed Course Dashboard, completing the interactive student training, and leaving messages on each others' Talk pages.
- Assignment - Create account and complete training
Required:
- Create an anonymous username and sign up for the Wiki Ed Course Dashboard.
- Complete the training modules below. You will learn the basic rules of Wikipedia and how to make edits in your user sandbox.
- When the training asks you to, open Wikipedia in another browser window and follow along with the example exercises.
- By the end of the training, you should have a little bit of text in your sandbox in which you demonstrate that you know how to: format text in bold and italics, make section headers, make bulleted lists, and create references. (I recommend using sample text like "This is a section header" and "Here is my list.")
Recommended:
- To practice editing and communicating on Wikipedia, introduce yourself to another student on their user Talk page.
- Explore Wikipedia entries about film directors, cinematographers, writers, and related jobs to get a feel for how these Wikipedia pages is organized.
Week 2
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 18 January 2016 | Tuesday, 19 January 2016
- Milestones
By Monday, January 18, all students have Wikipedia user accounts, are listed on the course page, and have completed the student training modules: Wikipedia Essentials, Editing Basics, and Evaluating Articles and Sources.
- In class - How to do research, evaluate and use sources
- Discuss strategies for finding a filmmaker and finding independent sources
- How to evaluate sources
- Discuss the most common reasons that new Wikipedia entries get taken down
- Explain close paraphrasing, plagiarism, and copyright violations on Wikipedia.
Handouts: Citing Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism
- Assignment - Choose a filmmaker and post her name to the Dashboard
Choose a filmmaker and post her name to the Dashboard. (If you end up changing filmmakers later, make sure to update the Dashboard!)
Tips:
- Look for someone with little to nothing written about her on the English-language Wikipedia site, but who has been written about in several reliable secondary sources (like books, journals, or the mainstream media). Film festival websites and film distributors don't count!
- If you know languages other than English, it's great to choose filmmakers who work in those languages and secondary sources in those languages because they're less likely to make it onto the English-language Wikipedia site.
- It is easiest to find filmmakers overlooked by Wikipedia if you look for women of color, women working outside the United States, women making films other than narrative features, and women who worked before the present day.
If you plan to improve an existing page:
- Put the page on your watchlist so that you see any changes that are made to it.
- To "Watchlist" any page, make sure you're logged in. Then just click on the star next to the "view history" tab on any Wikipedia page. When it turns blue, it's on your watchlist. See your watchlist by clicking "Watchlist" at the very top of your page when you're logged in.
- On that article's talk page, announce that you plan to improve the article. Once you have identified them, share the books or articles you plan to use, and ask questions if you have them.
Places to look for filmmakers:
- Websites about women filmmakers, such as:
- Canadian Women Film Directors Database
- Great Women Animators
- 10 Women in Title Design
- 100 Films Directed by Women Released in 2015
- 100 Women Directors Hollywood Should Be Hiring (2015)
- 7 Reasons African Female Directors Rock (2015)
- The Women Film Pioneers Project (Women who made silent films)
- 84 Films By and About Women of Color
- African American Women Feature Film Directors (2007)
- African Women in Cinema Blog (See list on the righthand side)
- The Director List: Women Directors at Work
- MUBI List of Films Directed by Women, by Ally the Manic Listmaker
- Pinterest List of Women Directors, by Destri Martino
- Sight & Sound info on Women Filmmakers
- Lists of Wikipedia "stubs":
- List of Wikipedia requested articles
- Books about women filmmakers, such as:
- Melnyk, George, and Brenda Austin-Smith, The Gendered Screen: Canadian Women Filmmakers (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010)
- Levitin, Jacqueline, Judith Plessis, and Valerie Raoul, Women Filmmakers: Refocusing. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003)
- Hillauer, Rebecca. Encyclopedia of Arab Women Filmmakers. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005.
- Pallister, Janis L., and Ruth A. Hottell. Francophone Women Film Directors: A Guide. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005.
- Janis L. Pallister and Ruth A. Hottell, Noteworthy Francophone Women Directors: A Sequel (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011)
- Nair, Parvati, and Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla. Hispanic and Lusophone Women Filmmakers: Theory, Practice and Difference. 2013.
- Juhasz, Alexandra. Women of Vision: Histories in Feminist Film and Video. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
- Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Women Film Directors: An International Bio-Critical Dictionary (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995)
- Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Women Filmmakers of the African and Asian Diaspora (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997)
- Barbara Quart, Women Directors: The Emergence of a New Cinema (New York: Praeger, 1988)
- Bobo, Jacqueline. Black Women Film and Video Artists. New York: Routledge, 1998.
- Petrolle, Jean, and Virginia Wright Wexman. Women and Experimental Filmmaking. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2005.
- Gabrielle Kelly and Cheryl Robson, Celluloid Ceiling: Women Directors Breaking Through (Twickenham: Supernova Books, 2014)
- Patricia White, Women's Cinema, World Cinema: Projecting Contemporary Feminisms (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015)
- Mary G. Hurd, Women Directors and Their Films (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007)
- Judith M. Redding and Victoria A. Brownworth, Film Fatales: Independent Women Directors (Seattle: Seal Press, 1997)
- List of trans and gender variant filmmakers (I can't guarantee that you can find enough reliable, independent writings on these filmmakers, but you may be able to. Some already have pages, but they could be improved.)
- Vaginal Davis
- Hans Scheirl
- Flawless Sabrina (producer of The Queen, 1968)
- Kristiene Clarke (director of Sex Change--Shock! Horror! Probe!, 1988)
- Venus de Mars (aka Steve Grandell)
- Pendra Wilson
- Mirha-Soleil Ross
- Christopher Lee (director of Alley of the Tranny Boys, 1998)
- James Diamond (director of The Man from Venus, 1999)
- Morty Diamond (director of TrannyFags, 2006)
- Alec Butler (director of Misadventures of PussyBoy trilogy, 2006)
- Sam Feder (director of Boy I Am, 2006)
- Jules Rosskam (director of TransParent, 2005 doc)
- Kimberly Reed (director of Prodigal Sons, 2008)
- Kortney Ryan Ziegler (director of Still Black, 2008)
- Rémy Huberdeau
- Jake Graf
- Tobaron Waxman
- Make an appointment with the MacOdrum Film Librarian
Week 3
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 25 January 2016 | Tuesday, 26 January 2016
- Milestones
By Monday, January 25, all students will have posted their filmmaker's name to the Wiki Ed Dashboard.
- In class - Mon, Jan 25
- In-class Research Training
Bring your laptop or tablet to class!
For part of Monday's class, we will practice finding sources beyond Google. We will also discuss how to assess sources for independence and reliability.
- Assignment - Annotated Bibliography
On cuLearn, post a document with the following information:
- Your name
- Your Wikipedia username
- Your filmmaker's name
- An annotated bibliography with at least four different sources about your filmmaker. At least two sources must be RELIABLE and INDEPENDENT. The bibliography should be in Chicago Notes and Bibliography format.
- For each source, write a short paragraph in which you: 1) summarize the source (What topics does it cover?); 2) assess the source (How reliable and independent is it?); 3) reflect on the source (How will it contribute to your Wikipedia entry?)
- The following sources may be used, but they are NOT considered reliable and independent and they do NOT count toward notability: any site made by the filmmaker, an organization she has worked for, or a festival or distribution company. Interviews with the filmmaker published in a well-known media outlet are a grey area, but they generally do NOT count toward notability.
Your sources should:
- Come from independent sources, that is, those not directly related to the subject.
- Come from sources known for fact-checking and neutrality, such as academic presses, peer-reviewed journals, or international newspapers.
- Come from reliable publishers, and represent a general consensus in the field (including significant minority points of view).
Resources: Guide to Evaluating Sources
Resources: Chicago Notes and Bibliography Style Guide (starting on page 3)
Research tools:
- MacOdrum's Film Studies Databases
- MacOdrum's Women's and Gender Studies Databases
- MacOdrum's History Databases
- MacOdrum's Historical Newspaper Databases
- Wikipedia Resources for Writing about Film
- Media History Digital Library
- Library and Archives Canada
- If you run in to trouble, make an appointment with the MacOdrum Film Reference Librarian
Week 4
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 1 February 2016 | Tuesday, 2 February 2016
- Milestones
By Monday, February 1, 8:30AM, all students have posted their annotated bibliography to cuLearn, which includes their name, Wikipedia username, and filmmaker's name.
- In class - Tues, Feb 2
- In-Class Wikipedia Workshop
Bring your laptop or tablet to class! Also bring in any books or articles you might need.
In class, students will work on their Wikipedia entries in their sandboxes.
- Assignment - Write article in your sandbox
- Complete the training modules below.
- Craft a complete and polished first draft of your article, including references, in your sandbox.
- You must add a minimum of 500 new words of prose about your filmmaker. You should also add lists and tables (such as filmography, awards, etc.), but this will not be counted as part of your word count.
- Make sure to include a robust lead paragraph at the beginning of the article. State the person's achievements clearly but dispassionately, so that it doesn't come off as promotional. (This is particularly important with living persons.)
- Cite reliable and independent sources often throughout the text, so that your page doesn't get taken down. In general, you should be citing at least once per paragraph you contribute to Wikipedia, but any quotations, hard facts (such as statistics) and controversial claims must be cited.
- Material in your sandbox is still subject to Wikipedia’s policies, so do not copy and paste information from your sources into your sandbox.
- Keep a backup copy of your draft on Word in case you experience technical difficulties (this is rare, but it happens).
Please use existing Wikipedia headings. Those in bold below are mandatory; others are optional.
- Early Life and Education
- Biography
- Career
- Legacy
- Filmography
- Awards and Nominations (if relevant)
- References
- Further Reading
- External Links
Resources:
- Guidelines for Writing about Filmmakers from WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers
- Guidelines for Writing Biographies from Project Biography
- Wikipedia Policy on Biographies of living persons
- What I'm looking for when I eventually grade your article: The (as near as possible) Perfect Article
Week 5
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 8 February 2016 | Tuesday, 9 February 2016
- Milestones
By Monday, February 8, 8:30, all students should have completed a draft of their article in their sandbox. Your instructor will review these drafts and advise students whether they are ready to be posted to the mainspace or if they require revisions before that stage.
Week 6
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 22 February 2016 | Tuesday, 23 February 2016
- Milestones
By Monday, February 22, all students will have heard from instructor whether their article is ready to be posted to the Wikipedia mainspace or if it requires revisions before this step.
- Assignment - Move article to mainspace
- Move your sandbox article into Wikipedia's mainspace.
- Handout: Moving out of your Sandbox
- If you are expanding an existing article, copy your edit into the article in small pieces. Save after each edit before you make the next one. Do NOT paste over the entire existing article, or large sections of the existing article.
- If you are creating a new article, do NOT copy and paste your text, or there will be no record of your work history. Follow the instructions in the "Moving out of your sandbox" handout (above)
Once your article is in the mainspace:
- Put the article on your Watchlist so that you can see if anyone revises it or writes on the article's Talk page.
- To "Watchlist" any page, make sure you're logged in. Then just click on the star next to the "view history" tab on any Wikipedia page. When it turns blue, it's on your watchlist. See your watchlist by clicking "Watchlist" at the very top of your page when you're logged in.
- Link to your article from other Wikipedia pages (particularly "Lists of..." pages).
- Add categories to the bottom of the article.
- Categories can be added with the VisualEditor by following these steps. To add categories using Wiki code, add Category:''Surname'' (without the first ":") at the bottom of the article. For example: Category:British women film directors. To find relevant categories, look at other similar articles or browse the Existing Categories list. For more information, go go: Categorization FAQ
- Note: There are sometimes both a "List" page and a "Category page" for the same topic. (Example: List of Canadian directors and Category:Canadian film directors.) You should make sure to include your filmmaker in both. Add your filmmaker's name to a list by editing THAT LIST. Add your filmmaker's name to a category by adding the category tag to YOUR PAGE.
- Examples of lists/categories: Canadian film directors, female filmmakers, Indian woman film directors, Hong Kong film directors, Silent film directors, Academy Award winners, Independent Spirit nominees, etc.
- The goal is to embed these people’s achievements in as many cross-references as possible!
What should I do if an editor takes my article down?
- Don't panic! And don't try to force it back up.
- The first thing you should do is email the instructor and let them know.
- Also, check to see if the editor has explained their actions on the article's talk page. If not, (politely) ask why it was removed.
- The instructor will work with you (and the Wiki Edu staff, if necessary) to make sure that your article adheres to all of Wikipedia's rules and policies so that it won't be taken down next time.
- Milestones
By Thursday, February 25, midnight, all students will have published their draft to Wikipedia's mainspace.
- Assignment - Choose articles to peer review
- Select two classmates’ articles that you will peer review and copyedit.
- You can see which articles need reviewers by clicking on the "Articles" tab at the top of this page.
- To sign up to review particular articles, go to the "Students" tab, go to your name, and click on the button in the "Reviewing" column.
- Assignment - Peer review and copyedit two pages
- Choose two of your peers' Wikipedia articles to peer review. (Each article should be reviewed by two people.) You can see which articles need reviewers by clicking the "Articles" tab at the top of the page. Register the two articles you are reviewing under your username in the "Students" tab at the top of the page.
- Review Wikipedia's Perfect Article Guidelines
- Read the article carefully.
- On the article's Talk page, write a full paragraph in which you discuss the article's strengths, but also give 2-3 specific suggestions for how the article could be improved.
- You should also copyedit the article itself. For example you could: correct any spelling or grammar errors; make the writing more fluid; take away promotional language; add transitions; change a list into a table; add more categories to the bottom of the page.
- In order to get full credit for your peer reviews, you must both give substantive feedback on the article's Talk page and copyedit the article directly.
Week 7
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 29 February 2016 | Tuesday, 1 March 2016
- Milestones
By Tuesday, March 1, 8:30AM, all peer reviews will be completed
- In class - Tuesday, March 1
- Optional In-class Wikipedia Workshop
Bring your laptop or tablet to class!
This class session is optional. Students have the opportunity to respond to their peers' suggestions and put the finishing touches on their article in class.
- Assignment - Final article
- Carefully review the suggestions made by your peers and other editors on your article's Talk page and implement any of them that you agree with and are feasible.
- Carefully read through your own article with a critical eye. Fix any grammar or spelling mistakes. Make sure that all references are properly cited in a standard reference style. Are there any copyediting suggestions that you could implement? (e.g., make the writing more fluid; take away promotional language; add transitions; change a list into a table; etc.).
- Add more links to your page in Wikipedia lists and add more categories to the bottom of the article. (See "Move your article to mainspace" assignment description for suggestions.)
- Try to add a biography box to the top right of the page, if you don't already have one.
- If you can get permissions for an image, add the image.
Handout: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polishing_your_articles.pdf Polishing your article
]
- Assignment - Reflection essay on cuLearn
- On cuLearn, submit a document with the following information:
- Your name
- Your Wikipedia username
- A link to the live Wikipedia article
- Your filmmaker's name
- The names of the two articles you peer reviewed
- Your reflection essay
Your essay should be between 300-500 words. In it, you should reflect on the assignment. Answer questions such as:
- What was the most valuable part of the assignment?
- What was most surprising about the assignment?
- What was the most difficult part of the assignment?
- What did you think of the Wiki Edu Dashboard?
- What did you think of the Training Modules?
- How could I improve this assignment for next year?
- What was the difference between writing for Wikipedia and the writing you do in most other college assignments?
- What did you learn by doing this assignment?
- Milestones
By Friday, March 4 at midnight, students will have finished all their work on Wikipedia that will be considered for grading.