Welcome to the Global Education Update — a newsletter from the Wikimedia Foundation that is distributed the first and third Tuesday of each month. Someone from our staff has talked with you about our Global Education Program to bring Wikipedia into higher education classrooms around the world, and we wanted to keep you in the loop on all of our exciting activities. If you would prefer not to receive these messages, simply reply to the email and ask for your address to be removed. Learn more about subscribing or read the archives. 

Plans underway for Cairo pilot in spring 2012
Wikipedia Education Program staff Frank Schulenburg and Annie Lin traveled to Cairo, Egypt, in December, to begin planning of a Cairo pilot of the education program, which will kick off this month. Joined by local Wikipedians, Frank and Annie met with professors and students in Cairo to determine the best plan of action for the spring pilot. Professors at Ain Shams University and Cairo University will be participating in the program, and students will be asked to both write Wikipedia articles for the Arabic Wikipedia as well as translate articles from other language versions into the Arabic Wikipedia. Learn more about Frank and Annie's travels and plans for the Cairo pilot by reading a Wikimedia Foundation blog post on their trip.

Few slots remain for U.S. and Canada program
Are you a professor from the United States or Canada interested in using Wikipedia as a teaching tool in your class this term? If you haven't already been in touch with a Wikipedia Education Program representative, please do so immediately! We have a limited amount of support resources available for professors in the spring, and only a few slots remain open. If you're interested in participating in the Wikipedia Education Program in the spring, please email Jami Mathewson today at jmathewson@wikimedia.org.

U.S. student's video featured in WMF blog post
Alverno College student Katy Lederer created a video of the Milwaukee Art Museum's brise soleil, a wing-like structure that closes at night and opens in the morning. You can read more about Katy's video, her inspiration for choosing that topic, and why she liked working on a video for Wikipedia as part of class, in a new blog post on the Wikimedia Foundation blog. Read the post.

Wikimedia trains "Referenten" in Germany
Frank Schulenburg and Annie Lin also traveled to Cologne, Germany, where they conducted a 1.5-day workshop with 10 longterm German Wikipedians who have signed up to be a part of an education program with Wikimedia Deutschland. The "Referenten" (similar to Ambassadors) will train professors and teaching assistants on how to incorporate Wikipedia editing into their classrooms. The Referenten will not be in the classrooms themselves, but they will be available to assist the professors, TAs, and students as-needed. For more information, check out the training slides (in German).