Wikipedia

From Bazaar Wiki

1 Type of application / System Requirements
2 Purpose
3 What it does
4 How can it be used for creation of OERs
5 How can it be used for consumption of OERs
6 License support
7 Standards / Compatibility
8 HOW TO USE IT
9 Sandbox
10 Comments / Discussion

Type of application / System Requirements

Wikipedia is not an application but an online encyclopedia based on a MediaWiki as software technology. Using Wikipedia requires only a standard web browser. Read and write access is granted for free.

Wikipedia is a very important resource for open content. All content is published under the GNU Free Documentation Licence (GFDL).

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Purpose

Wikipedia is a free and multilingual encyclopedia in the web. More than 75000 contributors have created over 10 million articles in over 250 languages. It is probably the biggist open content ressource in the Internet.

Articles can be created and edited by everyone, no matter which social, cultural or scientific background they have. Wikipedia wants to be a mirror of existing knowledge worldwide. It is not restricted to a specific usage. Anyone is welcome to add or edit articels as long as the editing policy of Wikipedia is respected. Due to the big community of contributors the quality of these articles is increasing more and more.

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What it does

Wikipedia is offered in more than 250 languages. For each language one encyclopedia with articles written in this language is offered. A search engine for every encyclopedia is offered to find appropriate articles. There is no taxonomy or hierarchy of articles.

If a search term fits to more than one article a short description for all search results is offered. If an article does not exist yet, a user can easily create a new one.

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How can it be used for creation of OERs

Wikipedia articles can be used as a content or knowledge base for creating own open educational resources. Because all articles are published under the GFDL Licence they can be re-used for OER as long as the regulations of this licence are respected. When reusing parts of a Wikipedia article the new OER has to be licenced under the GFDL as well. A Wikipedia articles "infects" your content with this licence.

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How can it be used for consumption of OERs

Wikipedia articles can be regarded as a kind of OER. Therefore Wikipedia itself can also be used for the consumption of OER - as along these resources are Wikipedia articles.

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License support

All Wikipedia articles are published under the copyleft licence GFDL. At the end of each article there is a link to the copyright regulations of Wikipedia. Before re-using an article a user should read the article about Reusers' rights and obligations.

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Standards / Compatibility

Wikipedia articles are written in text format with Mediawiki formatting syntax. There is no support of further E-Learning standards.

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HOW TO USE IT

Open a new window of your browser and visit the Wikipedia website www.wikipedia.org. There you find your language version of Wikipedia, e.g. en.wikipedia.org for English speaking persons or de.wikipedia.org for German ones.
Type in a search term for the article you are looking for.
Choose one article out of the search results
Identify the part of text you can re-use in your own OER
Copy the text to your document and add the required information (authorship, licence, source Wikipedia, link to the original article, ...)
Provide access to a transparent copy of your new text.

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