Thank you for the great initiative you are planning to take at your
university and for reaching out to the Wikimedia Education mailing list.
I agree with the voices recommending that students translate from English
to Czech not the opposite. For example, there are +4,500 featured articles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles on the English
Wikipedia and most of them do not exist or not in a good state on the Czech
Wikipedia. Students can start enriching the Czech content by translating
some of these articles.
I agree with Anna that coordinating with Vojtech and the Czech Wikimedia
Chapter would be of the best helping options. Their great experience and
restless volunteers will help a lot with your promising plan.
Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions you may have.
--
Samir Elsharbaty,
Communications Intern, Wikipedia Education Program
Wikimedia Foundation
+2.011.200.696.77
selsharbaty@wikimedia.org
education.wikimedia.org
On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 7:26 PM, Ziko van Dijk
zvandijk@gmail.com wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Is there a specific reason why your students are supposed to translate
> from the native language to English, and not the other way round?
> Writing for English Wikipedia is very difficult even to English
> speaking students. If the text quality of the contributions is (too)
> low, you might receive hostile reactions from English Wikipedians.
> Also, it is important not to regard Wikipedia as a place where to
> "dump" loads of texts. A text must be curated afterwards. At least for
> a couple of days, the students should be online and accept feedback in
> order to improve the texts. This time must be planned in your
> schedule. Again, if Wikipedians get the impression that "their
> Wikipedia" is "abused" as a "data dump place", leaving the work to
> improve and wikify the texts to them, the Wikipedia volunteers, it is
> possible that the reactions are hostile and that "articles" will be
> deleted.
> I hope this does not sound too pessimistic. :-) Also, I would advise
> to consider to let students something else do that "writing an
> article". I think that that is something a beginner should not start
> with.
>
> Happy to hear about your proceedings, on this list.
>
> If someone is interested, I could report about experiences with regard
> to German students translating from English.
>
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
>
>
>
>
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>
> 2015-05-21 18:10 GMT+02:00 Leigh Thelmadatter
osamadre@hotmail.com:
> > Ive worked for some time here in Mexico with Wikipedia, doing everything
> > from writing articles in English, to translation, to photography and
> > subtitling projects in Commons.
> >
> > I very much do recommend you contact the Czech education people, who are
> a
> > great bunch and can give you invaluable hands-on support.
> >
> > In my experience, I have found having students write new text in their
> > non-native language to be extremely challenging, and you have to be sure
> > that students are up for it. Translation gives the basic structure (a +)
> > but it also has problems with L1 interference in L2. (and vice versa but
> > particularly problematic for L1--> L2)
> >
> > If you are not sure if students are up for this (or you have the time), I
> > have a couple of suggestions for experimenting...
> >
> > 1) Have students review articles in English on Czech topics for
> inaccuracies
> > and/or out-of-date information and/or missing details or citations. The
> > Visual Editor tool has made article improvement a bit easier, especially
> the
> > addition of references.
> >
> > 2) Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org) has videos in English that
> need
> > subtitles. One teacher at my school Karen Mazanec, had students create
> > English subtitles for English video as intensive listening practice.
> >
>
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Newsletter/April_2015/New_to_W...
> >
> >
> > Interesting to to get your mail today as I had a meeting where they are
> > talking more about modualizing (not a word, I know) courses. If you
> could
> > send me a link about your course at Masaryk, I would appreciate it
> greatly.
> >
> > Leigh
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: dnk@mail.muni.cz
> > Date: Thu, 21 May 2015 17:40:12 +0200
> > To: education@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Education] confirm
> > 69ccb875820d9c89580605f70c3db83e8a426db7
> >
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > I am a teaching assistant in ONLINE_A, e-learning English course at
> Masaryk
> > University, Czech Republic. This course is structured around students
> > completing various English practice tasks and in that way gaining points
> > towards credit. I came up with the idea to make writing a Wikipedia
> article
> > one of those tasks. The course is relatively large, but since this is
> going
> > to be one of the more difficult tasks available and only the more
> advanced
> > students can actually do it, I assume there would be only about 6 to 12
> > students every semester doing this task. I would not be able to coach
> more
> > of them anyways. The students are unlikely to have previous editor
> > experience on WIkipedia. To accommodate for that, I plan to have them
> > translate an article from Czech to English Wikipedia and instruct them to
> > refer to an existing similar article on English Wikipedia to get a feel
> for
> > what they need to create.
> >
> > Example: Translate
https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michal_Tu%C4%8Dn%C3%BD
> as
> >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michal_Tu%C4%8Dn%C3%BD referring to
> >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Rogers as a source of inspiration.
> >
> > I am looking for an existing Wikimedia Education initiative under which
> this
> > initiative of my could be put into practice. I found "Studenti píší
> > Wikipedii" at
> >
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Countries/Czech_Republic.
> Is
> > it the correct bunch of people to turn to, given that I target WIkipedia
> in
> > English, not the Czech one?
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________ 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
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Education mailing list
> Education@lists.wikimedia.org
>
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>
--
Samir Elsharbaty,
Communications Intern, Wikipedia Education Program
Wikimedia Foundation
+2.011.200.696.77
selsharbaty@wikimedia.org
education.wikimedia.org