This content was inititally from Triangle Wiki and Sacramento Wiki.

So you're here as a teacher coordinating a class project or you're a student that's part of one of these projects.  Welcome!

First, make sure you've looked over the general Advice for contributors to the wiki on our TallahasseeWiki Guide page. This pages gives you more specific advice to doing class projects.

Why should you contribute to TallahasseeWiki?

Service learning can be one of the most fulfilling ways to learn - not only do you learn in a real-world setting, but you also get to help your community. There are lots of ways high school, college and university classes can contribute to the TallahasseeWiki in ways that are relevant to the class:

  • Political science classes can write about the politics of Tallahassee (on the city, county, state or federal levels)
  • History classes can write about Tallahassee Region history
  • Journalism classes can write about current events and issues (also see the local public policy wiki on Tallahassee issues HERE).
  • English classes can write about nearly anything
  • Photography classes can take photos of Tallahassee and add them to the appropriate pages or start a page with a picture.
  • ...and nearly any other class can find some aspect of Tallahassee to write about for the wiki.

Suggestions for teachers

  1. Say hello to one of the site admins (e.g. LizJoyner) so they'll know your class will be editing pages, and so they can offer your students advice and guidance as they edit.  They might even be willing to come in to give a presentation/orientation to your class!

  2. Pick a topic for your students to contribute to - for example, improving the listing of local services & organizations, adding more regular events, or building out the business directory, or writing more about local representatives.  Or if you don't want to pick a topic, you could have your students create some of the most in-demand pages.

  3. See the TallahasseeWiki Guide page for some advice on how to edit the wiki. And rely on the admin you contact - they can really be a good resource for helping out your students!

  4. If you have questions/concerns/suggestions about the overall process of teachers and students contributing to TallahasseeWiki contact an admin to discuss it, and also leave some notes on the Talk Page (if a talk page doesn't exist on the page you're wanting to discuss, create it by making a new page with the Page name/Talk, so if you're editing a page called "Cool stuff" talk page should be named "Cool stuff/Talk").

  5. Encourage other teachers and professors to contribute, as well.

A few notes:

  • Once something is published to the TallahasseeWiki, other editors (especially the admins) will jump in and make corrections and updates. So you may want to advise your students to write their articles offline, and upload them when they're done with them. It's anyone's right to improve a page once it's publicly posted to the TallahasseeWiki, so keep that in mind when students post pages. You may want to talk to an admin in more detail about how this might work out in practice.
  • TallahasseeWiki is a public web presence which is indexed by search engines and freely accessible to all. WikiSpot (our wiki host) provides information within the wiki on the IP Address of each contribution to the wiki.
  • Any material you place on TallahasseeWiki (even user pages) is automatically available to everyone under the Creative Commons licensing.

Suggestions for students

  1. Create your user page - there are more details about this you should read back on the TallahasseeWiki Guide page, but we've mentioned it again here because it's really important.

  2. See the TallahasseeWiki Guide page for some advice on how to edit the wiki.

  3. If someone edits a page you worked on, please don't interpret that is anything other than someone else trying to improve the page you're working on. If you want to create a completely new page and don't want someone making changes to it before you're finished, work on the page offline before putting it on TallahasseeWiki. If you're not sure why someone is making certain edits to your page, leave a comment on an admin's page (like LizJoyner) to ask for advice.

  4. If you have questions/concerns/suggestions about the overall process of teachers and students contributing to TallahasseeWiki, contact an admin to discuss it, and also leave some notes on the Talk Page (referred to above).

  5. Keep on contributing to the TallahasseeWiki even once your assignment is over - there are lots of things you know about our hometown that other people would probably love to know!

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