Dear fellow Wikipedians:
This is to let you know about my most recent article, co-authored with former student Kate Rattray. We’re especially proud of this piece, in which we make a pedagogical and public-service case for writing and editing Wikipedia articles for law school credit. The article has just been published in the Journal of Legal Education, which, appropriately, is an open-access journal. The current volume can be found here: http://jle.aals.org/home/. You can also read an abstract and download the article from my SSRN (Social Sciences Research Network) website, here: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2729241.
Yours truly,
John Kleefeld
Associate Professor, College of Law
University of Saskatchewan
15 Campus Drive
Saskatoon SK S7N 5A6
tel: (+1) 306.966.1039
email: john.kleefeld(a)usask.ca
skype: johnkleefeld
twitter: @johnkleefeld
web: http://law.usask.ca/find-people/faculty/kleefeld-john.php
Good evening, Professor Christie. My name is Lixxx235, and I'm a Wikipedia
editor and an Online Ambassador with the Wikipedia Education Program. (
userpage <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lixxx235>)
It's come to my attention (through a student's request for help via
Wikipedia's live chat) that you have given your students assignments
relating to editing Wikipedia. While the Wikipedia Education Program fully
supports such assignments, and endorses a number of courses at various
universities around the world, according to one of your students, an
assignment you've given seems to have students confused and is causing
submissions in violation of some Wikipedia policies and wasting volunteer
and student time. For example, this
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Fuel_controlled_fires_…>
is an entry one of your students tried to get help on from our live help
chat. This submission does not meet Wikipedia guidelines such as notability
policies, policies requiring verifiability of material, and policies
requiring a neutral point of view (NPOV) to be kept. In addition, it was
not in Wikipedia's standard format.
We'd love to get in touch with you. Please reply back to
lixxx235wikipedia(a)gmail.com and education(a)lists.wikimedia.org to see how we
can help you develop good assignments for editing Wikipedia and how we can
resolve some issues with your current assignment.
All the best,
Lixxx235
English Wikipedia
Hello.
I just read this:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/News/January_2018/Education_E…
If WMF wants to shut something down, OK, but then it's WMF's responsibility
to replace it adequately. In the article, I see no mention whatsoever of :
1) *data retention *- how will WMF do this so that no data on courses and
enrolled students is lost? Please remember this is data manually collected
by hundreds of volunteer teachers.
2)* providing a feasible alternative* - although Dashboard is very helpful,
it doesn't really communicate with Wikipedia unless there is a bot
transferring the data from Dashboard to userpages and coursepages on a
respective wiki. Many people from our community actually prefer us using
the Education extension because it displays information about students
on-wiki. If Dashboard is to be the tool of choice for student courses, it
should be much easier to set up a bot to transfer this data.
The Czech team is fairly big and professionalized and we could probably
cope with (1) on our own and maybe (2), but it's 100 countries we're
talking about here and I'd expect a more coordinated solution.
What do others think?
Vojtěch Dostál
předseda rady / chair of the board
Wikimedia Česká republika | http://www.wikimedia.cz
Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/Wikimedia.CR> | Twitter
<https://twitter.com/Wikimedia_CR> | Newsletter <http://eepurl.com/b--eXr>
*Are you running an education program on your local language Wiki? Share
your story on Feb 21 for International Mother Language Day. Use the hashtag
#IMLD and tweet @WikiEducationProgram. We promise to retweet and share! See
more: http://www.un.org/en/events/motherlanguageday/
<http://www.un.org/en/events/motherlanguageday/>*
--
*Nichole Saad*
WMF | Education Program Manager
nsaad(a)wikimedia.org
user: NSaad (WMF)
*Want to talk about the Wikipedia Education Program?*
Schedule a meeting: https://calendly.com/nsaad-1
Dear Wikimedia+Education enuthusiasts,
You still have time to contribute to the Education Newsletter with news
regarding your Education Programs! If you are:
- starting something new
- learning something from your education activities
- feeling the need to share what is going on in your education program
- have concluded a program and want to share lessons learned
- want to open for discussion a topic that is key to education programs
You're welcome to
1. go to
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/Newsroom
2. write the title of your article
3. write the body of your article and save it (it will show to be added
to the "Draft" list of article for this month's issue of the newsletter)
Note: Most article are 3-4 paragraphs long and include at least 1
picture... but feel free to innovate on the format if you want to.
Read you soon!
Vahid.
--
Vahid Masrour
Community Capacity Manager, Wikipedia Education Program
vmasrour(a)wikimedia.org
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education
The Education mailing list filters rejected my original email. Those
filters have caused similar problems in the past. I hope that this attempt
to send my email to the Education mailing list is successful. Apologies to
those who receive the same information twice.
Pine <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CatherineMunro/Bright_Places>
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Hello Wikimedia colleagues,
Some of you may remember the LearnWiki project [0]. Regrettably, the
project goals were not completed within the planned timeline and budget. If
you would like to read that grant's final report, you may find it here [1].
I continue to believe that there would be value in offering more online
training to Wikimedians through videos, and possibly interactive tutorials
and other resources, that could help Wikimedians with novice to
intermediate skill levels to improve their proficiency with navigating
Wikimedia online cultures, principles, referencing, VisualEditor, the 2017
New WikiText Editor (which I like to call "NEWT") [2], and other topics.
Currently, there is a variety of training throughout the Wikimedia
ecosystem. Training varies across projects (e.g. Wikipedia, Wikidata,
Commons), languages (e.g. English, Arabic, Japanese), settings (e.g. GLAM
workshops, university classes, online individual study), formats (e.g. in
person, remote, video, interactive tutorial, lecture), and themes (e.g.
Wiki Loves Monuments, Women in Red, WikiProject Military History).
I plan to create and distribute a survey during the next few months to ask
individual Wikimedians and Wikimedia affiliate organizations about the
training practices that you have used to train yourself or others, how
effective you think that those training practices are, and what types of
training you would like to have available in the future. This survey would
inform the development of training materials and methods.
Improving the quality and diversity of training is a long term goal of
mine. This campaign is currently not funded by the Wikimedia Foundation or
any Wikimedia affiliate, although I believe that the survey data will
provide valuable input for possible projects, and people may request
funding for some of those projects (whether or not they are collaborating
with me). I do not plan to request WMF funds for myself in the foreseeable
future, but I may request funding for other contractors or grantees for
some projects that are related to this campaign and who collaborate with
me. While I work on this initiative, I anticipate that numerous Wikimedia
affiliates and program leaders will continue to develop and refine a
variety of training materials, some of which will be funded by WMF,
affiliates, and/or other organizations. I hope to collaborate with others,
incrementally and over the course of years, to improve the quality and
diversity of training throughout the Wikimedia ecosystem.
I believe that WMF is planning to launch the 2018 Community Engagement
Insights survey in March, and to publish results in May. [3] The CEI survey
results from 2017 and 2018 are likely to influence plans for development of
training materials, although the survey that is focused on training will be
separate from the 2018 CEI survey. I plan to collaborate with WMF Community
Resources and WMF Learning and Evaluation *if* they have availability and
willingness to participate in the design and analysis of the training
survey. :)
Further updates about the training survey will be provided during the next
few months. In the meantime, you are welcome to contact me with questions
or comments through email, IRC, or on my Meta talk page, especially if you
would like to help with the design of the survey.
Regards,
Pine <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine>
[0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Learnwiki
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Motivational_
and_educational_video_to_introduce_Wikimedia/Final
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/2017_wikitext_editor
]3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement_Insights
Dear Wikipedia+Education Enthusiasts,
Are you still recovering from the end-of-year break and accumulated
workload? Worry not! We have a short newsletter for you this month:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/January_2018
And it starts with something you (and i) have probably never had thought
of: a video of recited poetry that explains math concepts, in Euskara (the
language of the Basque country).
With that inspiration, go ahead and read news from Sweden, Africa (through
WikiFundi regional project), and the celebration of 10 years of education
program in Serbia!
"But i want data", you say? The Education Survey Report is there for you!
Also in the news: It's high time to say good-bye to the Education
extension. Fear not, the Dashboard is here to help you!
Here is to a great 2018!
Vahid.
--
Vahid Masrour
Community Capacity Manager, Wikipedia Education Program
vmasrour(a)wikimedia.org
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education