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
(usual apologies for cross-posting!)
The board of the Wikipedia & Education User Group invites you to attend our
user group's next Open Meeting, one week from today, on Thursday, April 2,
at 15:00 UTC, as always via Zoom. We'll be discussing the Wikimedia &
Education community's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Guest speakers
include:
* Nichole Saad and Melissa Guadalupe Huertas from the WMF Education Team
will talk about their strategy and how you can help. (
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/education/2020-March/002511.html)
* User:TiagoLubiana, a graduate student in Computational Biology from the
University of São Paulo, and a leading editor at Wikidata:WikiProject
COVID-19, will discuss Wikidata's work around COVID-19 and how the
Wikimedia and education community can help. (
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_COVID-19)
Per usual, the board will provide an update on user group activities, and
we'll offer an opportunity for others to briefly share what they've been up
to in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Join us!
What: Wikipedia & Education User Group Open Meeting
When: Apr 2, 2020 15:00 UTC
Where: https://zoom.us/j/759620545
Meeting ID: 759 620 545
Hello all,
First, I want to say that I hope you all are doing ok. The COVID-19
pandemic has affected all of us in one way or another. Some of us are sick,
some are taking care of loved ones, some of us are taking care of our
children who are out of school. In light of this crisis, and our
organization’s radically people-centered response, the Education Team has
shifted our focus to supporting those affected by school closures to make
use of the Wikimedia projects to continue their learning.
TLDR:
How the Education Team at the Wikimedia Foundation will respond to the
COVID-19 Crisis
-
The Wikimedia & Education Project Management online course
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Greenhouse> will award
certificates to those who completed all 3 units by 31st March.
-
We will extend the deadline for earning badges until 10 May 2020.
-
The GOES project implementation
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Greenhouse/GOES_project>
will be postponed until schools are reopened in Ghana.
-
Our Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom project
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/About/Education_Team/Reading_…>
will focus on shifting to what can be done virtually while schools are
closed. The pilot phase is stalled.
-
We will shift our attention to supporting those affected by school
closures
<https://en.unesco.org/themes/education-emergencies/coronavirus-school-closu…>
to make use of the Wikimedia projects to continue their learning.
-
We have drafted a 4 point action plan that we will operationalize
asap. The outline of the plan is explained below.
In times of emergency, the importance of continuing the education of
children and youth is often overlooked
<https://www.educationcannotwait.org/the-situation/>. Providing educational
opportunities during these times not only prevents children affected from
falling behind academically, but it also helps foster a sense of stability
in uncertain times and builds up the resilience of communities impacted by
the crisis. We must remember that education is a basic human right of all
people, including those affected by crises and instability. Right now, that
includes all of us.
Last week, we asked our Wikimedia community how the COVID-19 pandemic is
impacting their planned education activities, what they think we should do
to help, and what they are already doing. In parallel, the Education Team
drafted a comprehensive action plan to shift our focus toward helping
teachers, parents, and students make use of the Wikimedia projects to
bolster the learning of those out of school. Let’s talk about the ways that
COVID-19 has impacted education worldwide, and how our Wikimedia community
is making a difference.
The situation
According to UNESCO and the Interagency Network for Education in
Emergencies, as of today, 156 countries have announced or implemented
school and university closures
<https://en.unesco.org/themes/education-emergencies/coronavirus-school-closu…>,
impacting *1.42 billion* children and youth. Roughly 82% of students are
out of school due to this crisis.
First, what’s happening with the projects we have been working on?
Understandably, as schools close around the world, some of the work we have
been doing will need to be paused. For that reason, we are holding the
implementation of the GOES project in Ghana until schools are reopened. We
will, however, continue to mentor and support the GOES team. We have
decided to keep the deadline for earning certificates for the Greenhouse
Online Course as 31 March 2020, but we will extend the deadline for earning
individual badges until 10 May 2020. We hope this will give more people the
chance to engage with the content, and use it to support activities that
mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on education in their communities. The
activities that needed to happen in schools and classrooms for the Reading
Wikipedia in the Classroom project will need to be postponed, but we will
continue with the activities that can be done virtually.
How is this crisis impacting our Wikimedia & Education Community, and what
are they currently doing to support learners?
So far, we’ve received 15 responses from the community about how they are
impacted by this crisis, and how they are supporting learners during this
time. We received responses from volunteers from 11 different countries
located in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. All
the respondents indicated that schools were closed in their communities,
and their planned Wikimedia outreach activities had to be canceled. Most
indicated that universities had moved to provide online courses, though
some had simply canceled courses.
The respondents indicated that they have started working completely online
to support teachers and students impacted by school closures. They are
sharing the resources they’ve developed, hosting edit-a-thons, virtual
training, working alongside governments and other collaborators, and
hosting virtual meet-up sessions for teachers. What an amazing community we
have! We’re so proud to be a part of it.
Now, what’s our action plan moving forward?
The Education Team at the Wikimedia Foundation drafted a four-point action
plan for our response to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on
education. This plan was designed to be agile. As the situation evolves day
by day and the capacity of the team fluctuates, we need a plan that can
expand and retract as necessary. The four points we will focus on are:
1.
We will create and share learning resources related to Wikimedia in
Education
1.
We will curate and share widely the resources produced by our Wikimedia
& Education community. To do this we will be asking the community to share
their resources with us, likely through a submission form.
2.
We will develop templates & examples for teachers to share lesson plans
that make use of Wikimedia projects. We will provide guidelines for
teachers to understand how to add open licenses to the educational
materials they produce and add them to Wikimedia Commons.
3.
We will expedite a resource for using Wikipedia to teach information
literacy at home. We will use plans and materials we had drafted for the
Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom Project to quickly create a 1 to 2-page
resource that will help educators use Wikipedia to teach information
literacy.
2. Will will initiate #EduWiki challenge
1.
We will use social media to share daily mini-lessons that use Wikimedia
projects, and we will provide guidelines for the community and others to
create and share their own mini-lessons. We will be sharing information
about this challenge and how you can participate on Monday.
3. Foster knowledge sharing about the impact of COVID-19 on Education
*a. *We will encourage our network of Wikimedians and education partners to
keep information on Wiki up to date and accurate about the impact of
COVID-19 on education
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pan…>
and to share the impact of COVID-19 on their communities and what they are
doing to respond.
4. Support the UNESCO COVID-19 Education Coalition
1.
We will join a coalition led by UNESCO that will work to mitigate the
impact of COVID-19 on education. Through this, we intend to help
governments to curate content from Wikipedia that aligns with the national
curricula to include in distance learning and to make it available through
free content bundle packages provided by internet service providers and
offline through Kiwix.
2.
We will encourage governments to share free licenses in their texts so
teachers can remix and share them more freely.
What can you do? How can you get involved?
-
You can share or participate in the #EduWiki challenge on your social
media channels. We’ll be providing more information about this on Monday.
-
You can create and share lesson plans using the template that we’ll be
sharing soon.
-
You can help improve Wikipedia articles that align with school
curricula.
-
You can fill out the google form
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/14xX4Y8Ud6abw_PDjdzxS8--iEzlBVQ78akcCdsF…>
to share information about how the COVID-19 crisis is impacting your
community, what you are already doing to support students and teachers, and
other ideas you have of how our community can be helpful. This survey will
be conducted via a third-party service, which may subject it to additional
terms. For more information on privacy and data-handling, see the survey
privacy statement
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Education_Response_to_COVID…>
.
with clean hands and open hearts,
The Education Team
--
*Nichole Saad*
Wikimedia Foundation | Senior Program Manager, Education
nsaad(a)wikimedia.org
user: NSaad (WMF)
Forwarding.
Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 3:55 PM Mark Graham <mark(a)archive.org> wrote:
>
> On top of our efforts to add links to citations, in Wikipedia articles, to digital versions of referenced book available from archive.org (150K books from 10 Wikipedia language editions and counting…)
>
> The Internet Archive just launched a National Emergency Library.
>
> We would like to collaborate with, and otherwise support, every related WikiCite project.
>
> The team at the Internet Archive that is now working on this project include:
>
> Maximilian Doerr (cyberpower678)
> Stephen Balbach (GreenC)
> James Hare (harej)
> Jake Orlowitz (ocaasi)
>
> Please reach out to me directly if you would like to explore what we can do together!
>
> - Mark Graham
> Director, the Wayback Machine @ the Internet Archive
> (917) 697-0110
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikidata mailing list
> Wikidata(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata
Hi,
I hope you are doing well! It is a very stressful time and many of us are
affected by this, sending some hugs and good vibes. I want to remind you
about the affiliates meeting on *25th March at 14:30 PM UTC*. Also, a good
time to check-in with our colleagues and to know how they are doing.
We will focus mainly on education response to Covid-19, and how Wikimedia
projects can help students and teachers during this pandemic. Last week,
when we did a tweet
<https://twitter.com/WikimediaEdu/status/1240229686082301954?s=20> asking
the education community to share their ideas, around 500 Million students
were affected by the pandemic worldwide. And now, the number has increased
to more than 1.3 Billion. We look forward to seeing you during the meeting,
share the action plan by the education team and brainstorm more on this
topic.
*Request before the meeting:*If you could spend 10-15 minutes of your time
in the next couple of days to fill this form
<https://airtable.com/shr3EN72TTEUt8yMb> to provide us with resources you
or your affiliates have developed to support Wikimedia in education, that
will help a lot.
You can join the meeting by clicking on this link:
https://meet.google.com/ibk-vmdj-pyy Please let me know if you need a
calendar invitation for the meeting.
Best!
--
*Sailesh Patnaik*
Program Coordinator, Education
Juhar everyone,
Sorry for crossposting. We are here with the education office hours for the
month of March. Know more here:
https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/wikimedia-education-office-hours/3263
Join us on 19th March 2020 at 12:00 PM UTC.
The agenda for March Office Hours are:
-Reading Wikipedia pages are now on Outreach, know more about the research
-Wikimedia Education evaluation recommendations
-Highlight series by the education team
-Please add other topics you want to discuss during the event:
Looking forward to seeing you all then, Please let me know if you have any
questions.
Do you want to reach out to the education team for a 1:1 consultation?
Request for a slot for Education Office Space (
ttps://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/About/Office_Space
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/About/Office_Space> ) by
filling this google form ( http://bit.ly/EduOfficeSpace )
Dhanyabaad!
--
*Sailesh Patnaik*
Program Coordinator, Education
Dear Wikimedia & Education community,
First I want to say that I hope you all are doing ok in this time of
crisis. We all have been affected in many different ways, and you all are
in our thoughts. If you haven't heard, the Wikimedia Foundation is
operating at a reduced capacity
<https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/wikimedia-corona…>
to allow staff to take care of themselves and their loved ones. In light of
this, the Education Team has shifted our focus to supporting those affected
by school closures to make use of the Wikimedia projects to continue their
learning. I'm writing to ask if any of you have the time and energy to
work alongside us in this effort.
According to UNESCO, as of 16 March, 73 countries have announced or
implemented school and university closures. 56 countries have shut schools
nationwide, impacting almost 516.6 million children and youth. A further 17
countries have implemented localized school closures to prevent or contain
the spread of COVID-19. The Education Team is working to produce messaging
and resources that can help people make use of the Wikimedia projects to
supplement learning for out of school children.
*You can help by *
- *Telling us how the pandemic has impacted your Wikimedia & Education
activities*
- *Providing your ideas of how our community can be helpful in this time*
- *Letting us know anything you are already doing. *
*I've created a google form where you can share this information.
<https://forms.gle/D6EYziPLsCVT2tTu9>*
In the following day or two, we'll synthesize the ideas and share them with
all of you. We'll also provide a few concrete ways you can support the
effort.
Thank you for all that you do,
Nichole
--
*Nichole Saad*
Wikimedia Foundation | Senior Program Manager, Education
nsaad(a)wikimedia.org
user: NSaad (WMF)
Hello everyone,
The Wikipedia & Education User Group is conducting a survey to understand
the technological needs of EduWiki community across the movement. The
results of this survey will not only assist to map the global needs of the
leaders of Wikimedia in Education, but also help us to prioritize the
needs. The Wikipedia & Education User Group’s goal is to support the
development of better resources and technical tools to support the work
happening around the world. Please help us spread the word. Every EDUWiki
user/leader counts, and the more people fill out this survey, the easier it
will be to advocate for our needs.
Link to the survey form:
https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0jupLRlhxRpPGWp
Also, as some you of might already be aware that the User Group is
organizing EduWiki Conference 2020, in Serbia, we have proposed a grant to
WMF in this regard. We would like community members to go through it and
endorse it at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/Wikimedia_Serbia/EduWiki_…
.
Let us know if you have any questions regarding the survey or the
conference.
Regards,
Krishna Chaitanya