Interesting thread!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Ambassadors#The_future_of_our_p…
This is the main challenge in my opinion for the second semester for
WEP in Brazil, multiply the number of ambassadors - there is some
progress here in the pilot. To convince professors on the importance
and need of this program after showing successful cases seems easier
than to have enough campus ambassadors for the demand. A key step of
the project when we are thinking about expanding in any place.
Tom
--
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
Wikimedia Brasil
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi all,
In a little over two hours, we'll be having the monthly Wikipedia
Education Program Metrics and Activities meeting. If you're running an
education program in your country, I encourage you to join the meeting
and share what you're up to. Instructions for joining are here:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program_Metrics_and_…
LiAnna
--
LiAnna Davis
Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
http://education.wikimedia.org
(415) 839-6885 x6649
ldavis(a)wikimedia.org
Bill gave me permission to forward this email here.
Anyone on this list who'd like to have a 1:1 conversation with him
about whether his technology (it's a dedicated Perl/MySQL online
learning platform which he built himself) might make sense in a
Wikimedia context? He's open to the idea of open sourcing it. It's
probably most relevant to Wikiversity and related efforts.
Erik
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bill Van Horne <billvh375 at gmail dot com>
Date: Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 9:23 AM
Subject: New Service for Wikimedia?
Mr Möller:
I have worked for the past seven years programming a multilingual
Adaptive Learning system, which is now ready for use. I am wanting to
find an organization that has a character that meshes with my own,
with whom I can work to provide this as a service for the betterment
of humanity. Your organization tops my list of those with which I
would like to explore a working relationship.
I am willing to provide this service completely free to everyone.
Alternatively, Wikimedia could offer this as a sliding-fee-scale
subscription service to educational institutions based upon their
ability to pay. In short, the profit motive is secondary to the
educational aspect, but if the two can coexist, then I am open to
achieving both goals.
I would think that Wikimedia would like to find a business model that
won't rely forever for its survival on donations from a public that
can be unpredictable at times, combined with philanthropists that can
also choose not to give. Alternatively, if Wikimedia is content with
its current funding model, then I would be happy to explore how this
service could be integrated into Wikimedia's services, such that the
maximum benefit is attained with no associated profitability.
I am asking for 15 minutes of your time to show you how this system
integrates concepts and facts, presented in standard browser
compatible media, to create absolutely individualized teaching for
students anywhere that the Internet is available (and even where it is
NOT available).
I believe that much of Wikipedia's current content could be accessed
as is, with this system acting as a content delivery system that
simply acts to hierarchize the concepts into relevant associations of
educational material for a learner, which are presented while a live
volunteer human observes an entire group of learners at the same time,
and interacts when appropriate, to support each one's individual
learning process.
By SKYPE or phone I can walk you through the different user interfaces
so you can evaluate what I am proposing, and see if you feel it merits
further investigation as an adjunct to what you guys are already
doing. I developed and used this system while living in Peru, South
America for many years, and there are math teachings in Spanish I can
use to demo the system for you. If you want a preview of the system
before agreeing to meet with me, you can go to
http://www.llearnersa.com
Sincerely,
Bill Van Horne
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Sure only 300-400 participate but the class itself was indeed 1500 first
year students support by 4 ambassadors. I think it was a fair try and glad
to hear that we have all learned from it.
I guess the main think I wish to emphasis is that we have in place
mechanisms to verify the edits of contributors through this program and we
cannot simply expect the community (which is in fact very small in
many academic areas) to take on this role. As mentioned by others may be
funding from the University to pay for grad students to specifically review
all the work?
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
There's a discussion here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia.org
(and talk)
.. about centralizing some of the backstage wikis (including
OutreachWiki), either under Meta, or possibly under www.wikimedia.org
(the latter is more controversial). Essentially we'd use namespaces
for more content separation.
This would affect folks working on OutreachWiki today, so I wanted to
bring it to your attention. What are the advantages/disadvantages of
having a dedicated wiki? Now would be a good time to speak up on the
talk page :-)
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Now I am a huge supporter of encouraging students to edit Wikipedia.
However last fall I can across a psychology class of 1500 first year
students contributing content to psychology articles. There was
four ambassadors / teaching assistants. Two of these never made a single
edit to Wikipedia and the other two had only made a handful. The prof of
this class never made a main space edit.
Three long standing editors from Wikiproject medicine took it upon
themselves to review every edit made by this class as it was clear that no
one involved with in an official manner was planning on providing any
oversight. I brought my concerns to the profs attention and I guess hurt
his feelings as he as left Wikipedia and stopped responding to my concerns.
He also cancelled his next semesters plan to contribute. Our analysis can
be found here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Colin/Introduction_to_Psychology,_Part_I#…
There appears to be a mis perception from some in academia that anyone can
just show up to Wikipedia and have at it. That we are little more than
anarchy. We need to be very clear that this is far from the case. That
while anyone can contribute, we have policies and procedures that vary from
subject area to area and are supported by small groups of dedicated
volunteers. And that if people / classes do not contribute in a possible
manner than they will have their edits reverted and may lose their editing
privileges.
Unless we go about these collaborations slowly and carefully we are only
going to alienate those we are reaching out to and piss off our current
volunteers. We need to make sure that if students are going to contribute
content that it is of high quality and that mechanisms are in place to
review their work. While Wikipedia can be used as a teaching tool it is
first and foremost an encyclopedia. And we can not just expect the current
community of volunteers to take on the task of providing guidance to large
classes of students who are here as part of their classwork. This
population is different than people who are here as simple volunteers, not
only in the fact that there are more of them but also due to the reason for
them being here.
A few things that IMO would make a difference:
1) The profs themselves must edit Wikipedia (preferably having brought
something to GA or FA within their subject area). And if we are going to go
with large classes than so must their teaching assistants. The only way to
learn how Wikipedia works is by editing content.
2) There must be a number of hours of in class instruction on Wikipedia's
policies and procedures. One does not begin writing for the New England
Journal of Medicine without first learning their manual of style and
referencing requirements.
3) If classes are working on content they should concentrate
on improving the quality of one or a few articles. Assignments such as "go
out and make an edit to the subject area of this class" should not be
repeated.
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
I just uploaded on outreach wiki the Albanian translation [1] of the
book "Прирачник за wiki".[2]
"Прирачник за wiki" is an instruction manual about wiki in Macedonian,
written by Wikipedians Kiril Simeonovski, Zoran Meckarski, Slobodan
Jacoski and Dimce Grozdanoski (me). The aim of this work is to help
Macedonian civic organizations to start their own wiki site, wiki
administration, editing its content, and building the site policy.
We (WMMK in collaboration with Metamorfozis) continue to work on French
translation, I hope at the end of this summer we will finish with
translation.
[1]
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:PRIRACNIK_ALB_preview.…
[2]
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wiki_Instraction_Manua…
Best regards,
--
Dimce Grozdanoski
President of Wikimedia Macedonia
Twitter: @grozdanoski
Just to let you all know, I started a discussion on prerequisites at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Ambassadors#Prerequisites.2C_we…
Basically, I said that pretty much every non-Freshman course has
prerequisites of one sort or another and that by not requiring
prerequisites we're sort of throwing them off into the deep end before
checking to see whether they can swim. If this is meant for non-Freshmen,
then these students should first meet basic prerequisites. If this is
meant to be a Freshman-level course, well, they're sort of editing rather
esoteric and complex concepts in general for Freshman, aren't they?
Bart User:Banaticus