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Wikipedia in the news: 26 May 2008

04 Jun 2008 in Wikipedia by Enoch Lau | No comments

High-​​school stu­dents study course on Wikipedia

HSC stu­dents to get Wiki­pe­dia course – As of next year, the Eng­lish cur­riculum for stu­dents sit­ting for the Higher School Cer­ti­fic­ate, which is taken in New South Wales, Aus­tralia, will incor­por­ate an elect­ive called “Global Vil­lage”, which will include the option of study­ing Wiki­pe­dia. Explain­ing the choice of Wiki­pe­dia, the Eng­lish inspector at the Board of Stud­ies, which over­sees the HSC, said that Wiki­pe­dia reflects “notions of the global vil­lage”, and that the course will allow stu­dents to exam­ine com­mu­nic­a­tions on a global scale. There has been a pos­it­ive response from edu​ca​tion​.au, a not-​​for-​​profit edu­ca­tional organ­isa­tion that brought Wiki­pe­dia co-​​founder Jimmy Wales to Aus­tralia on a speak­ing engage­ment last year. The CEO of edu​ca​tion​.au, Greg Black, said that young people need to learn how to under­stand and con­tex­tu­al­ise the inform­a­tion they gather on the Inter­net and to determ­ine “whether there’s an altern­at­ive view”.

Other men­tions

Other recent men­tions in the online press include:

  • Clinton’s entry in Wiki­pe­dia has a watch­dog – One of the edit­ors watch­ing over Hil­lary Clinton’s Wiki­pe­dia bio­graphy has been brought unex­pec­ted celebrity and is pro­filed by this article.
  • The Wiki busi­ness plan – Sue Gard­ner and Kul Wad­hwa talk about growth plans for Wiki­me­dia, the busi­ness side of the found­a­tion, and future opportunities.
  • REPN TRI to the FULLEST!!! — “[A]s a model of dis­course, it’s a kill­joy”; this author believes that the style of the prose on Wiki­pe­dia is apt to lead stu­dents to believe that intel­lec­tual dis­course is “leaden” and “spiritless”.


As pub­lished in the Wiki­pe­dia Signpost

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Not gone, but not out of the woods yet

29 Oct 2007 in Honours by Enoch Lau | 1 comment

I haven’t blogged for over an entire month, and I’ve been want­ing to blog, because I love blog­ging but things in RL have con­spired to take me away from here. I have a whole list of things I want to blog about, and I have a few posts queued up wait­ing to be fin­ished, but I think they’ll have to wait until after everything is done for this semester.

Thesis.

What an awful concept. They’re hard to write.

[ramble]
If I were a world dic­tator, I’d change the onus from writers to read­ers for con­struct­ing coher­ent argu­ments and struc­tur­ing prose. :) We’re already doing you the favour of find­ing all the mater­ial to talk about — why should we also bother to present it nicely?
[/​ramble]

Sigh. Well, it’s been an inter­est­ing year, and I have no regrets tak­ing a year off law to do hon­ours. I’ll blog more about that later, when I have the pleas­ure of reflect­ing back in a stress-​​free environment.

Sign­ing off for prob­ably another couple of weeks…

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UNSW Law Revue, M-​​Fest and other events of celestial magnitude

29 Aug 2007 in Goings-on, Law, Photography by Enoch Lau | 4 comments

I’ve been mean­ing to blog more reg­u­larly, but I’ve just been too busy to write stuff up for your enjoy­ment. Sorry, I lie. I’ve just been too lazy, and there’s just so much going on in my head recently, it’s hard to con­cen­trate on writ­ing a coher­ent piece of prose.

Aiya, UNSW Law Revue 2007 (entitled Poll Fic­tion) was a load of shit. A com­plete waste of a Thursday, the leaden act­ing, lame jokes that lacked even the concept of a punch-​​line and the bright spot­lights that seemed intent on burn­ing my ret­inas out made the night a mem­or­able event for all the wrong reas­ons. I won’t be going back any time soon la~ Fine, there were some enjoy­able skits, but the drive home (thanks Tommy!) was a more inter­est­ing exper­i­ence than the revue itself. Yeah, what he said. Daniel and I were youtube-​​ing before head­ing off, and we noticed a video (now deleted? can’t find it now) from someone at Usyd blast­ing the UNSW revue for mak­ing fun of our quad and hav­ing the UNSW Galactica joke — well, there wasn’t a Usyd quad in sight, but the Galactica got a men­tion. With the Galactica joke, I think it’s more likely that there’s a mole on the UNSW team that allowed Usyd to score a hit against UNSW before their revue even started.

Over the week­end, I went to Malay­sia Fest 2007 (pho­tos) and got myself a dose of Malay­sian cul­ture. I can see why it’s true that Malay­si­ans are said to live to eat… the food, hav­ing Malay, Chinese and Indian influ­ences, was quite inter­est­ing and tasty =) Of course, it helped that I had a guide who lives to eat, so Ru Jih, if you actu­ally read this, many thanks for a great day out, wouldn’t have been the same without you :P … hope it didn’t make you too homesick~

The other thing that’s happened recently is, of course, the lunar eclipse. Con­clu­sion: I need a tri­pod. These black rect­angles are awful — you really can’t do a shut­ter speed longer than 1/​60s if you’re hold­ing the cam­era with your hand, and when the moon’s that dim, you’d need at least a few seconds of expos­ure. Still, it was a very beau­ti­ful thing to watch, and lit­er­ally out of this world.

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