Leaving our mark...

The long winter is finally over. Not because it's gorgeous out, but because North Dakota finally has an elementary school listed in the Wikipedia: Bennett Elementary School.

The entry was created by Katie's fourth-grade class. I came in and demonstrated what the Wikipedia was (about half of them knew already), and noted that Bennett had no entry, indeed, that not one elementary school in North Dakota had an entry. The kids took the bait, and we researched the article over two more class sessions, the last one just before school let out for the summer.

I thought it was a cool project, because it gave the kids a good lesson on what the Wikipedia is, how its entries are created, and, more generally, how to research, source, and construct an article of their own on a topic they're actually a little interested in. And at the end of the day, instead of having worked on a project just for the sake of working on a project, we have added a little bit to the world's store of knowledge.

Katie and I took on the task of assembling the research into the article. I was afraid for awhile that we would get distracted by summer and head home to Maryland without getting the damn thing published. But we managed to get it out. Now I'm afraid that the entry will be deemed insufficiently noteworthy for inclusion in the apparently-not-quite-bottomless Wikipedia pit. We'll see.