Portal:Wiki Scholar/About the movie

About the Wiki Scholar movie
The word “scholar” can be applied to anyone who is a learner, although I would reserve its use for someone who consciously tries to find better ways to learn. The movie is meant to provide some images that concern Wikiversity as a place for scholars. The movie starts with a baby reaching towards an object. This act of reaching is part of an instinctive human drive to explore the world. The phrase, “reach for the stars” and the similar phrase, “follow your star” are applicable to Wikiversity. Conventional educational institutions are typically restricted by the demands of their expensive infrastructure and students are forced to adapt themselves to the factory-like educational apparatus. In contrast, the Wikiversity infrastructure is cheap and of a type (the wiki user interface) that can adapt so as to support the needs of students. The baby is reaching towards a star. From the perspective of biology, human behavior is fundamentally dependent on social learning. Even small children learn to use cultural artifacts, “tools”, that amplify one’s ability to explore the world. Wiki technology in general and Wikiversity in particular are tools that scholars can use as learning aids. The baby’s hand (which looks like the letter “w”) is shown grasping the wiki tool. Wikiversity becomes a tool that a scholar can use to explore the world.

I like the phrase “learning the wiki way” because it is an example of a phrase that has two good meanings. 1) A good topic for Wikiversity scholars is: “the nature of wiki-style online collaboration”. We need to learn about "the wiki way". 2) Wikiversity should be a place that strives to support learning in the wiki style of learning projects that involve collaborative webpage editing. At Wikiversity we adopt the practice of learning in the wiki way.

“Wikiversity” is a strange word. For banners, I like the approach of putting the “wiki” part of “Wikiversity” above the “versity” part. I also like keeping the “star” and using the “hand” of a “w” to reach for the star. This leads to a logo that only uses the star and the "w" and "v" from "Wikiversity".