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
Dear Wikimedians,
Last year, the Education team at the Wikimedia Foundation launched a pilot
teacher training program that helped teachers use Wikipedia in their
classrooms. Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/our-work/education/reading-wikipedia-in-the…>
provided a professional development opportunity to over 500 teachers in
Bolivia, Morocco, and the Philippines with a localized curriculum and
resources aligned with UNESCO’s Media and Information Literacy framework.
Throughout this 9-week program, teachers developed vital media and
information literacy skills for the 21st century, including understanding
how information is produced, accessing and evaluating content online, and
identifying biases and knowledge gaps. All through the power of Wikipedia
<https://www.k12digest.com/changing-the-narrative-the-power-of-wikipedia-to-…>!
You can read more details about the pilot program and its impact in our
final report
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reading_Wikipedia_Final_Report.pdf>
[1].
Now, we are opening up the opportunity to more Wikimedians, mission-aligned
organizations, and individuals to participate in a Training of Trainers
(ToT). By the end of the ToT, participants will be certified to lead
training for Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom. They will be able to adapt
& implement the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program in their local
contexts to help teachers use Wikipedia as a pedagogical tool. Participants
who successfully complete the ToT will also have access to a pool of
funding that can support their local activities. You can learn more about
the ToT timeline and curriculum on Meta
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Reading_Wikipedia_in_the_Classroo…>
.
We think you or members of your community would be a great fit! We invite
you to attend an information session on Thursday, July 29 at 13:00 UTC via
Zoom <https://wikimedia.zoom.us/j/95280050770>. The team will share more
detailed information, answer questions, and announce the open call for
applications. If you have any questions ahead of this event, please don’t
hesitate to reach out to the team at education(a)wikimedia.org
We look forward to seeing you at the information session!
--the Education Team
[1]The program report
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reading_Wikipedia_Final_Report.pdf>
shows us how teachers’ attitudes towards Wikipedia changed as they moved
through the curriculum, responded to practical assignments and reflection
questions, and participated in synchronous sessions led by local
coordinators of the program. For example, one of the participating teachers
from Bolivia said that at first he “thought that Wikipedia was a platform
like Google, but now I value all the volunteer work done by the community
behind it”. The program model also supported members of the local Wikimedia
affiliates to improve their capacity to organize and lead education
initiatives. Currently, the Wikimedians of Bolivia
<https://twitter.com/wikimedia_bo/status/1415057167804162049> user group is
launching the second edition of the program! The resources
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Reading_Wikipedia_in_the_classr…>
created for the program are available on Wikimedia Commons in English,
Spanish, Arabic, and Tagalog, and they are free for anybody to use, adapt
and share.
--
Sailesh Patnaik (He/Him)
Program Officer, Education
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>