Hapgood

Mike Caulfield's latest web incarnation. Networked Learning, Open Education, and Online Digital Literacy

May 2018

  • Establishing the Significant History of a Newspaper on Wikipedia

    Ultimately one of the prime goals of the Newspapers on Wikipedia project (#NOW) is to make sure that significant local publications have an infocard, and thereby are more likely to generate a Google panel in the search results. But that’s not the first, or hardest step. The first, and more difficult, step is to establish the Continue reading

  • Announcing the Newspapers On Wikipedia Project (#NOW)

    TL;DR: I am announcing a project to get students and faculty to produce 1,000 new Wikipedia articles on significant English-language local newspapers by October 12, 2018. This will represent a substantial increase in Wikipedia coverage of these papers (An increase of 1,000 U.S. papers would be almost a 40% increase in U.S. coverage, for example). Continue reading

  • Civix Releases New Online Media Literacy Videos

    I worked with Civix, a Canadian non-profit, to do a series of videos showing students basic web techniques for source verification and contextualization. I had boiled it down to four scripts running six minutes apiece; Civix and their production partner managed to cut them down to about three minutes each after filming. Here’s the introduction, which Continue reading

  • Neartopias

    Everything is depressing and messed up so let’s take a lunch break to talk about neartopias. If you look up the phrase “neartopia” on the web you’ll find a couple solitary pages of someone proposing a anarcho-libertarian island government, but that’s not what I mean in my use of the term. Instead, I mean a Continue reading

  • Google’s Big AI Advance Is… Script Theory?

    Like many people I watched Google’s demo of their new Android system AI calling up a hair stylist and making an appointment with trepidation — was this ethical, to not disclose that it was an AI? But now that the smoke has cleared, I’m realizing something a bit more disturbing. After years of Big Data  Continue reading

  • Taking Bearings on The Star

    One thing people may not realize is I use the exact same techniques we teach to students in my daily work. The skills we are giving students aren’t some dumbed-down protocol. They are great habits for reporters, researchers, and other professionals as well. As an example, this article came up in my news alerts this Continue reading

  • The “Just Add Wikipedia In the Omnibar” Trick

    One thing we do in the Digital Polarization Initiative is to hone the actions we encourage students to take down to their most efficient form. Efficient meaning: easy to memorize quick to execute with a high likelihood of providing a direct answer to the question you have Our student fact-checkers rely heavily on Wikipedia, and Continue reading