I think Charles' suggestion is right on: a couple of screencasts demonstrating the use of VE would be a great thing to have.
While VE itself needs less and less explanation in terms of the mechanics, there's still a lot that newcomers won't know in terms of how they *ought* to use it. It would be great to demonstrate the basics of what is expected of a Wikipedia article, using VE. This is somewhat analogous to the approach we took with VE in the "Editing Wikipedia" brochure: the center spread is about edting with VisualEditor and wikitext, but the VisualEditor side of it is all about the structure of a Wikipedia article. Showing a tightly edited demonstration of someone starting a well-structured sandbox article from scratch in VE, and explaining why they are using all the formmatting tools they use along the way — from bolding the title to section headers to wikilinks to citations to adding images to external links in a 'see also' section — that would be ideal.
It's probably not something Wiki Education Foundation would tackle any time soon, though.
Similarly, it would nice to have some guided tours that walk through the basics of VE usage, similar to the wikitext ones in the current training. I *might* find time to squeeze that in at some point in the next few months.
We're tenatively planning to redo the WP:STUDENT training as part of the Dashboard/Course Page system we're building, so that it would have knowledge checks along the way and probably send users over to Wikipedia to go through sandbox guided tours to practice the basics. But that won't happen until (probably) late 2015.
-Sage
On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 1:38 PM, Jami Mathewson jami@wikiedu.org wrote:
I don't know what our future training plans are, as I think the current training is pretty great for English Wikipedia. Definitely one of our best resources for students, so it's probably not a priority to improve that just yet. Sage may have better information about that, though.
You'll have to be more specific about ideas that inspire students, and may I suggest we take this off-list so as not to overwhelm everybody's inbox? Jami
On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 12:34 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks Jami (and sorry for misspelling your name. I am far too used to writing to Jaime Anstee!)
Will Wiki Ed be developing training for VE?
LiAnna had some great ideas about how to inspire students. Are those incorporated into the standard training anywhere?
Thanks,
Pine
On Feb 23, 2015 12:26 PM, "Jami Mathewson" jami@wikiedu.org wrote:
They're still using the student training[1], as we do not have a specific training for VE.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Training/For_students
On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 12:09 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Jaime, thanks for the info. What training materials are these courses using?
Pine
On Feb 23, 2015 9:50 AM, "Jami Mathewson" jami@wikiedu.org wrote:
We have some classes that are editing primarily with the VE this term. Those classes still assigned the regular training for students, as the concepts about the community, policies, sourcing, and copyvios are important no matter which editor you use. We also thought the intro to wiki markup in the training would still be useful—for talk pages and other pages where you cannot enable the VE. Jami
On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 7:43 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
On 23 February 2015 at 12:56, Vojtěch Dostál vojtech.dostal@wikimedia.cz wrote: > > I suppose WMUK's learning environment is not something other language > editions can profit from, right? > > I still strongly prefer the Wikipedia:Training toolkit. > It depends what you want. The VLE is 81 lessons, now plus one new "digital literacy" course, and so is more than a quick introduction. It has quizzes, and I added some videos just before Wikimania.
A simple solution to teaching the VE would be perhaps two screen capture videos, demonstrating how to use it for some simple operations.
Charles
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-- Jami Mathewson Educational Partnerships Manager Wiki Education Foundation jami@wikiedu.org User:Jami (Wiki Ed) @WikiEducation wikiedu.org/partnerships/
Our organization supports the Wikipedia Education Program in the United States and Canada.
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- Jami Mathewson Educational Partnerships Manager Wiki Education Foundation jami@wikiedu.org User:Jami (Wiki Ed) @WikiEducation wikiedu.org/partnerships/
Our organization supports the Wikipedia Education Program in the United States and Canada.
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- Jami Mathewson Educational Partnerships Manager Wiki Education Foundation jami@wikiedu.org User:Jami (Wiki Ed) @WikiEducation wikiedu.org/partnerships/
Our organization supports the Wikipedia Education Program in the United States and Canada.
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education