projects for this semester...
I will begin teaching Infotechmarketing at Delaware again in a few days. One of the projects I am considering is a project aligned with wikipedia.

Now I am thinking aloud, so any feedback would be much appreciated!

Each student selects x articles from wikipedia, that they plan to edit. I need to approve. Articles must be on topics the students are passionate about, have some significant knowledge. Each article can only be selected by one student.

Students are required to make x edits to each article throughout the course of the semester. Edits will be required by certain times throughout the course (i.e. not all edits can occur in the last week.) There will be some requirement as to what constitutes an edit.

Each time a student makes an edit, he / she will blog about the edit. What he / she did, why etc (each student will be running a blog for the course).

At the end of the semester the student will blog about the evolution of the article, from the time of the first student edit until the end of the course.

To begin the project each student will sign up for an account. Each article selected will be added to their watchlist so they can follow additional edits etc. Other school projects for wikipedia can be found here.

OK, any feedback would be much appreciated.

wiki 100
our wiki reached 100 pieces of new content since launch! yeahhhhhh...

updating the dictionary II...
as I continue to update my dictionary I continued to struggle with what I should link to when I was referencing a company, such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc. Should I link directly to their site ? Should I link directly to their Wikipedia entry ? To avoid making a decision I created a separate dictionary entry for each company that links to both, and their archive.org entry so we can explore a little evolution too. Example is http://www.udel.edu/alex/dictionary.html#google

I thought that was an elegant solution. Now I am thinking I should do the same for people the dictionary references (like Marc Andreesen, Gordon Moore, Tim Berners-Lee etc) ?

updating a dictionary...
I have been spending many hours updating Hackers Hits and Chats, a dictionary I created probably about five years ago when one was needed. Updating it has become a rather large project, but it is necessary as I prepare for class in about a week. I am planning to use the dictionary as a core component of knowledge for the class.

I was thinking of ditching it entirely and going with Wikipedia but I think there is something to be had by having a 'container /wrapper' around the content you need your students to know. So instead I linked each of my definitions to wikipedia's definition for further exploration. I actually think this works quite well.

There are a number of times that I cite companies and people. I am now conflicted on whether I should link these to their own sites (here is the entity); to their wikipedia entry (here is information about the entity); or to both.

Any ideas / feedback ?