Tag: wikipedia

This is something I learned at the FETC conference. You can make  your own book from wikipedia content. Unlike collecting content from other sources, this is not a copyright violation and facilitated by wikipedia. The process works like this.

1) Open wikipedia content you want to add to your book and find the create a book option under Print/export in the left column of the wikipedia display.   2) This link will reveal the book creator screen.   3) At this point, you select “add this page to the book”. The idea is that you identify different wikipedia resources and assemble a book from these resources.

4) The resources will be accumulated in this fashion,

5) When finished, you download the collection as a pdf or book.

6) The appearance of the book is shown below. The book includes a detailed summary of sources and authorship for the material selected.

How might this capability used in an academic context. Have students assemble their own book on a topic (e.g., large mammals of Wisconsin). Projects can then be based on student study of this content. These is an interesting opportunity here to evaluate the selection of content and the connection between the content and the project. Students might also share their resources with each other.

Here is another suggestion from my wife. Mindmap generates an interactive “mind map” based the content of wikipedia. Enter a search term and that term becomes the starting point for the map. I am guessing what the application does is built the representation based on the embedded links (note correspondence between wikipedia entry and mind map below). I would have to think a bit to determine if I felt a “mindmap” met my definition of concept map. I assume the premise is that a mindmap captures the structure of the author(s). Perhaps it just captures the list of things they could find links to.

Anyway, it is interesting and worth a look.

From a map node, you can link to the wikipedia entry or expand the map.

It would be interesting if you could direct Mindmap at any mediawiki site, but at present the selection is limited to wikipedia versions.

Hmm – is authored hypermedia a representation of personal mental structure? Sounds like a research topic.