NCCE
I had planned on blogging while at the Northwest Council for Computers in Education conference last week, but it’s hard enough to find time at the conference to be at the conference, much less blog about it! (I know I should blog from the sessions, but I always forget to ask permission before they start, and I don’t want to typety-type away in the back and look like I’m doing email or playing Scrabble or something. Being a presenter is hard enough without worrying about participants surfing the web.)
All that being said, it was a great conference! For instance, here are just a few things I learned about Wikipedia -
- The whole Wikipedia system is a lot more complicated than I ever realized. There are multiple levels of participation Readers, Editors, Admins, Bureaucrats, Stewards, Root, ArbCom, and Board of Trustees. The bandwidth of Wikipedia now peaks at over 3 gigabits per second
- There is a gigantic, active social structure among the registered users of Wikipedia that reinforces the goals of the project.
- There are teams of editors that work to undue vandalism on a constant basis. “Vandal bots” constantly monitor edits, and if certain terms pop up the bot emails the editors to check the new contributions and fix any obvious problems.
- If you want to cite a Wikipedia article exactly as you are viewing it at this moment, click the link on the left of the page that says Cite this page. Not only will it give you a bibilographically correct citation, it will also cite the version you are viewing, rather than whatever version is currently active in the future. This prevents embarrassing moments when a page has been vandalized, and also makes certain that the citation reflects the information you want, regardless of future edits.
I have uploaded some pictures of the conference at my flickr page. Videos and podcasts from the event are now up at the new, updated NCCE website. I should be tired, but I’m already getting psyched about next year!
Technorati tag ncce2007