Hi Balázs and Mina,
I think there is no straight line in between the school levels because
there are too many factors here. For instance, you can have a great
enthusiastic professor, who understand Wikipedia, teaching a classroom with
a very bad average level of students, whose contributions to Wikipedia
won't be that great (and in Brazil, according to some professors I've
talked since I joined the university, there can be a considerable level of
fluctuation on the level of the students for each school term). Or you can
have a professor that doesn't interfere or get involved with activities on
Wikipedia, but we have good contributions of good students. Both cases
happened here. There are several other possibilities if we think of the
variables involved in such system, like infra-structure, students maturity,
Wikipedia community reception (for instance, the Portuguese Wikipedia is
much less welcoming than the Arabic one, and even the English), cultural
background, experienced Wikipedians support etc..
When I started to plan (although without time) the education program in
Brazil, I have consciously chosen the top
universities<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Program/Education_pro…
(usually
public). Firstly, that would increase the probability of having a good
average level of the students, which for me it is an important condition to
have motivated students and good contributions. That could also help with
media: if I have some of the trendy universities, that makes life easier to
get news and get professors from other universities that aspire the top
ones to do the same. I think the media attention can also happen when you
show very poor regions and create a case around it, mainly if it is
successful.
From an open call we made here for the education
program, there appeared
some professors of lower level universities (although the
focus were top
ones), and I could check, after visiting some classes and seeing the
results, that students had more difficulty to create original content - so
they had to translate and adapt, which is easier. In some cases students
can even find difficult to write proper Portuguese, as several friends of
mine, today professors, have told me and I've seen with my eyes when some
students from low level universities call me to teach basics math (that
they should learn at school, for instance).
I've heard from WMF colleagues sometimes at American universities that
doesn't rank among the top ones had sometimes really good contributions,
more than some top ones, and that is not that difficult to explain when we
think about students motivation to be in a classroom and what is the
motivation to edit Wikipedia or simply share knowledge.
If you want sell a program and that you are a charity organization, using
somethings I mentioned can help, like fancy photos and a good communication
work. (Just think why the most watched movies in the world are watched. :)
Even so, if you think on the challenges to make things happen in some
places (like Namibia, Brazil and I guess your countries), we have really to
register and learn the most we can from it. And we can use these cases even
for the global north, you can good to poor regions of US and Europe and
say: look, even people from Namibia and Brazil are using Wikipedia,
shouldn't you use as well?
Tom
2013/7/13 Mina Theofilatou <theoth(a)otenet.gr>
Balázs, with all due respect to both Epukiro and the
Smithsonian, the
initiatives that lie somewhere in-between the charm of rural
settings and
the clout of established institutions don't grab attention as easily. Check
out blog posts tagged "global education program" at the WMF Global Blog and
you'll see them (unfortunately two of us - at least that I know of - were
not awarded scholarships for Wikimania to share our work and interact with
other Wikimedians and educators)
Mina
--
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
OKF Brasil - Rede pelo Conhecimento Livre
http://br.okfn.org