Hello people,
thank you for the many good ideas and considerations. In my
experience, sometimes the involved parties don't make clear what are
actually the goals. What is the goal of the school, what exactly does
it want to teach the children. And what is the goal of the involved
Wikipedians or Wikimedia organization. Is it about creating content
for a wiki, or is it about spreading some concepts and values
cherished by the Wikipedia community.
Kind regards
Ziko
2018-09-12 12:24 GMT+02:00 Gabriel Thullen <gabriel(a)thullen.com>om>:
Hi Felix,
It is great that a Middle school approached you for running a Wikipedia
program. In my experience, it works best if the teachers themselves are the
ones doing the training. This means that you first have to get the teachers
personally involved in the project, train the teachers and show them where
they can get (immediate) help if they have any questions. The teachers have
to be comfortable with editing Wikipedia before they can pass those skills
on to their students.
In Middle school, the students still have a close bond with their assigned
teachers, it is more difficult for an external trainer to come into a
classroom and teach the kids something without cooperating closely with the
regular teacher. If their current teacher has a negative view of Wikipedia,
most of the students will share that view. That can change, and as teachers
we know that in a following year when a teacher no longer have certain
students in his or her class, most of his/her credibility will have been
lost overnight (as well as his/her negative view of Wikipedia). But it
would be easier to first change that teachers negative view than waiting
for next school year and hoping that the students will have another teacher.
So basically you have to be sure that the teachers will support and go
along with the project. The school authorities, of course, but the teachers
must agree. We are all volunteer contributors, nobody forces us to write
and there is no way that an activity like the one you are looking into can
be imposed on the individual teachers. Get the teachers excited about
Wikipedia editing and the students will join in!
There are a number of good suggestions in the answers, so I will not add to
them. If you want to talk about what I do in Middle school please contact
me.
I really hope that your project will work, and I am very interested in the
outcome.
Best regards
Gabriel Thullen
On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 11:53 AM Bekriah Mawasi <bekriahm(a)wikimedia.org.il>
wrote:
Hi Felix,
The education program at Wikimedia Israel runs in Middle schools and in
High schools as well in both Hebrew and Arabic for few years now.
In both programs, the students write new articles and improve articles too
by enriching the content. Choosing a theme
<
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/News/February_2018/The_Multid…
for each group would be a good start
especially if there is a common
template to the topic on Wikipedia (i.e. flags); another interesting
project was working with students on expanding Wiktionary
<
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/News/April_2018/Students_Writ…
,
students added expressions in Hebrew
following a research instructed by the
teacher and assisted by an editing tool developed by WMIL. In multilingual
educational systems, translating short articles can be a good exercise
especially if a glossary was determined ahead by the instructional team.
The organization accompanies the school staff and the students throughout
the program by 1) introducing Wikipedia which is essential to the process,
2) providing instructional tools which enable students to self-train
themselves at home too, 3) running editing workshops at schools. Some
schools would run the program as of part of their "project based learning"
activities, which ensures efficiency.
I hope my answer was helpful, and good luck with the initiative!
Best,
Bekriah Mawasi
Arabic Education Coordinator, WMIL
On Fri, Aug 31, 2018 at 2:06 AM Felix Nartey <flixtey(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello All,
> A middle school has approached us to
run a Wikipedia program for them.
We
> are considering training the students on how to effectively use Wikipedia
> as well as hinting them on the ability to correct basic things such as
> typos and grammar. We also intend to teach them how to play the Wikidata
> game.
> Is our approach good? or what
alternative activities we can have with the
> school.
> Thanks in advance for your comments
or suggestions.
> Regards,
> --
> *Felix Nartey*
> *Open Foundation West Africa <https://openfoundationwestafrica.org/>*
> *+233242844987 | **+447452508504*
> *Skype:Flixtey*
> *Website: **https://openfoundationwestafrica.org/
> <https://openfoundationwestafrica.org/>*
> ᐧ
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--
*بكريّة مواسي*
*منسّقة المشاريع التّربويّة*
*Bekriah Mawasi*
*Arabic Education Coordinator, WMIL*
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