The use of Wikipedia is not allowed for research in some classrooms, but in a selection of courses taught by ethnic studies, gender and women\u2019s studies and performance studies professor Juana Mar\u00eda Rodr\u00edguez, students are not only encouraged to use Wikipedia, but are creating and editing Wikipedia pages themselves.<\/p>\n
Beginning in 2016, Rodr\u00edguez has assigned her students to create and edit Wikipedia articles about LGBTQ+ people, with a particular focus on queer and transgender people of color. She has incorporated the assignment into three of her classes: \u201cDocumenting Marginal Lives,\u201d \u201cQueer of Color Cultural Production\u201d and \u201cQueer of Color Critique.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI want my students to think of themselves as not just consumers of knowledge but as being able to produce knowledge as well,\u201d Rodr\u00edguez said in an email.<\/p>\n
Rodr\u00edguez has integrated Wikipedia into her curricula in collaboration with Wiki Education, a nonprofit organization that trains faculty in the United States and Canada to assign their students to create content for course-related Wikipedia articles. The organization seeks to fill in \u201cknowledge gaps\u201d on Wikipedia around gender, racial and ethnic diversity.<\/p>\n
To date, Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s students have added more than 300,000 edits and 3,000 citations to Wikipedia, which have been viewed more than 96 million times \u2014 figures that Rodr\u00edguez said she is \u201creally proud\u201d of.<\/p>\n
Topics covered by Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s students range from community activists, such as transgender activists Adela V\u00e1zquez and Karla Avelar, to local landmarks such as the White Horse Bar, a gay bar in Oakland. They have also written about cultural topics, including an article about Indigenous drag queens.<\/p>\n
Rodr\u00edguez said she values the Wikipedia assignments because they provide an opportunity for her students to share their research with a larger audience beyond the class, especially those in school districts where there is limited access to information about LGBTQ+ history.<\/p>\n
To emphasize the extent of LGBTQ+ history, students have documented topics such as homosexuality in ancient China to Milton B. Matson, a transgender person in San Francisco in the 1890s. They have also added information to address present-day issues, such as providing information about legal services for transgender migrants in the United States.<\/p>\n
Under the Trump administration, Rodr\u00edguez believes that efforts to document LGBTQ+ people are more important than ever.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, the Trump administration is trying to erase the very existence of transgender people, so having information about those histories, as well as present challenges facing queer and trans communities is particularly urgent,\u201d Rodr\u00edguez said in an email. \u201cQueer and trans people have always been here and adding that information to the world\u2019s largest open access encyclopedia is one way to make sure that these stories remain available.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The use of Wikipedia is not allowed for research in some classrooms, but in a selection of courses…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[74357,12672,3573,74353,4729,74350,74352,74358,2434,74360,143,145,144,74351,74355,74354,1519,435,74359,74356,2277],"class_list":["post-150059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-adela-vzquez","tag-canada","tag-china","tag-documenting-marginal-lives","tag-ethnic-studies","tag-gender-and-womens-studies","tag-juana-mara-rodrguez","tag-karla-avelar","tag-lgbtq","tag-milton-b-matson","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-performance-studies","tag-queer-of-color-critique","tag-queer-of-color-cultural-production","tag-trump","tag-united-states","tag-white-horse-bar","tag-wiki-education","tag-wikipedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}