Archive:Stories: Difference between revisions

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+{{cquote|I teach "brain fitness" classes for institutionalized disabled and older adults. The idea is to keep them thinking, analyzing, discussing, learning, remembering and involved in our changing world.  Wikipedia allows me to be responsive to their questions for free.  I work for the State of California, and our budget has been slashed so severely that we have no resources at all for lesson planning. It's up to me, the instructor, to find and prepare everything for class with my hourly pay or for free.  Wikipedia provides invaluable, up-to-the-minute, verifiable information for free.  Thank you!
+Also, each time I explain to my students what Wikipedia is, we launch into discussion about the changes in encyclopedias since their youth, the new technology, publishing history, timing and societal expectations for services, communications, and more. My older students are amazed that Wikipedia exists, and very, very grateful that it does! They have learned to ask me to look things up for them and report back next class!  :)
+If you don't use it, you lose it!  You keep us all thinking.  I am grateful too!
+Thank you all--everyone around the world--for contributing to Wikipedia, and to those who started it all! }}
+<hr>
 {{cquote|In my opinion, the two most laudable goals of Wikipedia are its aim of free universal accessibility by all of humanity, and its ideal of veracity of content, the latter being policed by countless users themselves.
 While it is an extremely important aid to the populations of the developing world, it is as well a sobering window on other cultures for members of the so-called developed world.