[Foundation-l] Wikipedia at schools

[Frank Schulenburg]

Hello all,

last friday Wikimedia Germany realised a pilot scheme for a new project 
called "Wikipedia at schools". It is based on the fact that Wikipedia 
evidently is the most popular source of information for german pupils 
today. During september 2006 we asked 98 pupils at the age of seventeen 
of the "Andreanum" [1] at Hildesheim (about 25 km southeast of Hanover) 
which source of information they would prefer to prepare their homework. 
A total of 63 per cent stated that they favor Wikipedia and Google 
(which will lead them to Wikipedia in nearly all cases) over printed 
works. The pupils answers to other questions clearly showed us that they 
fully trusted in all of the information they find online. Almost never 
they challenge those information nor do they analyze its quality. But 
beside the fact that Wikipedias quality increases each day we have to 
admit that there are certain areas where quality improvement is badly 
needed. We should feel responsible to the pupils for the clarification 
of this fact and for tips how to recognize the quality of a Wikipedia 
article (does the editor cite reliable sources? is the article written 
from a neutral point of view? etc.)

So we organized a day of information about Wikipedia for all pupils of 
the eleventh grade of the Andreanum as well as for their teachers and 
parents. The day started at 10 o'clock in the morning with a general 
introduction about the goals, history and functionality of Wikipedia. 
Afterwards we had two workshops for pupils and one workshop for 
teachers, taking two hours each. In particular the workshop for teachers 
cleary showed us a great need for detailed information about the 
functionality of Wikipedia. None of the teachers knew much about how the 
articles emerge and which instruments of quality improvement already 
exist. After a short break we had another block of workshops for pupils 
and for parents. At five o'clock in the evening all 110 pupils and about 
20 teachers and parents had attended at least one workshop. The day 
ended with a lecture held by a teacher of a school at Fulda (about 80 km 
northeast of Frankfurt) who wrote a short article for the english 
Wikipedia with the pupils of her English class in 2005[2] and who gave 
us a detailed report about her experiences.

Our next goal will be to evaluate our work and to compile a short 
guidebook about Wikipedia for pupils and teachers[3]. Together with the 
Andreanum at Hildesheim, Wikimedia Germany will enter a contest called 
"Deutscher Innovationspreis für nachhaltige Bildung" (German Innovation 
Award for Lasting Education)[4].

Photos we took at Hildesheim can be found on Commons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Schulprojekt

Wikimedia Germany is deeply indebted to the two administrators 
User:Finanzer and User:Markus_Mueller who worked with the pupils last 
friday and to the Andreanum Hildesheim for its cooperation.

Greetings,
Frank Schulenburg

Board member of Wikimedia Germany
Phone +49 (0)551 2726447
Frank.Schulenburg [at] wikimedia.de

[1] Founded before 1225, the "Andreanum" is one of the oldest schools in 
Germany http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_Andreanum_%28Hildesheim%29
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Norris
[3] 
http://de.wikiversity.org/wiki/Projekt:Online-Nachschlagewerke_in_der_schulischen_Praxis
[4] http://deutscher-innovationspreis.de/