I'm working with a few lecturers for a CA program at Imperial; Alex is involved and is
training me as an ambassador.
Vinesh
President, WPians at Imperial College
On 4 Jun 2011, at 22:16, "Martin Poulter"
<infobomb@gmail.com<mailto:infobomb@gmail.com>> wrote:
I can see five broad ways we can try and engage in education. The diversity of
possibilities is great but it means that it's difficult to take a structured approach:
each of these things needs a proper working group or task force, and effort on many
fronts, in order to have a chance of success. Hence I welcome the list’s input on how we
should focus. If we can get a small group of people with ideas and contacts in each area,
that would be fantastic. So, five areas:
* Secondary education: get schools using the projects in their educational activities, as
Ollie Bray talked about in his keynote at the AGM. This could include projects with
content outputs, such as QR-tagging a museum or documenting local geography. There are
very broad possibilities here.
* Adult education, as proposed by Roger (I agree with WSC that we should promote
“contributing” rather than “creating articles”)
* Higher education practice: get a Campus Ambassador programme working in UK universities.
Knock on effects: student Wikipedia societies; Wikipedia assignments getting accepted as
teaching practice; big improvements to swathes of WP articles on difficult academic
subjects.
* Higher education: get Wikimedia projects recognized by universities as a platform for
disseminating and archiving content, whether for teaching or research. Convince funders
and projects that we can take care of their content, and give it exposure, at least as
well as they can.
* Higher education: get university courses using Wikiversity as a platform, thereby
improving WV and opening up educational practice.
I work in HE, and I’ve made that a priority. Apologies, but with adult education I’ve not
got past some exploratory emails. The body for this sector was Lifelong Learning UK, but
that was wound up earlier this year. NIACE
(<http://www.niace.org.uk>www.niace.org.uk<http://www.niace.org.uk>) seems the
most relevant body. Finding an enthusiast in a relevant local or national body would be a
way to break through to many tutors around the country.
There is a working group for the Campus Ambassador project and Alex has been great at
pushing this forward, including putting out the call for CA applicants. We are taking the
sustainability of this project seriously. There are more people who can and will be
involved, but I’m not sure how to how to co-ordinate this with the other activities.
In the area of getting universities using us as a content platform, Fae and I are talking
to funding bodies and things are moving in a positive direction. We’re aiming not just to
arrange events with these organisations, but to affect strategy in a lasting way. In the
last few weeks I’ve spoken at the Open Educational Resource conference and, as another way
to reach out to that community, created this document for CETIS, which provides advice to
the whole sector:
<http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Wikimedia_Commons_for_UKOER_resources>http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Wikimedia_Commons_for_UKOER_resources
There’s a lot more to be done in terms of reaching out to individual projects and teaching
support units.
Dealing with universities and national educational bodies, we face a similar environment
to working with museums and libraries, in that there’s financial and organisational
turmoil, and a large proportion of teaching support colleagues in my university and
nationally are in some sort of redundancy or job reallocation process. This doesn’t
prevent WMUK doing what we want to do, but slows the process and means people have time
for us than we would have a couple of years ago.
Higher Education and WV: Leutha is keen on this and I think there are things I can do to
help. In terms of affecting teaching practice, there are publications and projects we can
target.
Schools: I understand Steve V. has a good relationship with a Bristol primary school as a
result of Jimmy’s visit back in January, and we have other school educators in our
community.
What would help now, with all these areas, is if people on this list respond to me in
private email about what goals they can help us work towards, and I assemble a plan with
next steps and who can do them. I envisage a whole area of the WMUK site about our work
with education, but before I do that I need to audit what we can reasonably aim to do,
rather than make promises we can’t deliver on.
If you've read this long email, you've proved sufficient dedication to the cause.
;)
On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 10:17 PM, Thomas Morton
<<mailto:morton.thomas@googlemail.com>morton.thomas@googlemail.com<mailto:morton.thomas@googlemail.com>>
wrote:
Roger,
Would be interested to see if Martin made any progress with that. I have to submit lesson
plans next week so hopefully might have something of my own to contribute by then.
Pitching this stuff is hard; kids at different ages see things differently, and kids in
different areas age at different speeds.
On the other matter; you're clearly way more experienced at this teaching lark than me
:) but personally I find that this is the sort of thing that is best taught by
"doing". One thing I did with on old teaching group (last year) was set up a
cloned wiki with some content copied from Wikipedia and got them to edit it over the
course of a few sessions (including collaborating using talk pages etc.) One of the
biggest problems with new editors is helping them understand the eco-system.
Tom
On 1 June 2011 22:36, Roger Bamkin
<<mailto:victuallers@gmail.com>victuallers@gmail.com<mailto:victuallers@gmail.com>>
wrote:
Two minor threads: Martin Poulter and I discussed how we could put together a teaching
plan so that someone like yourself could organise an enevening course in "creating
your own wiki page" ... not sure whether Martin made any progress. I know he was
investigating ... I suspect there are a lot of people who would like to put their local
history work into Wikipedia ... if we just explained it and demo ed it at the same time.
Other thread. I teach secondary ICT. I'm planning to teach intro to Wiki editting next
week. I have still to find some resources. Any help appreciated.
regards
Roger B
On 1 June 2011 17:34, Alex Stinson
<<mailto:stinsoad@dukes.jmu.edu>stinsoad@dukes.jmu.edu<mailto:stinsoad@dukes.jmu.edu>>
wrote:
There is an education list at
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education which appears to be one of the
better ways to contact people because not everyone regularly checks outreach wiki
(including myself). I invite people to join who want to work with Education and Wikimedia
projects, it include a fair number of Campus Ambassadors who are doing innovative stuff at
universities as well as a number of other people in various chapters involved in education
stuffs,
Alex
On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:29 PM, Thomas Morton
<<mailto:morton.thomas@googlemail.com>morton.thomas@googlemail.com<mailto:morton.thomas@googlemail.com>>
wrote:
Hey Alex,
Yes a lot of that has been my starting point. FWIW there is a lack of content for the
younger age groups (say 14-16) which is where my current focus is; the
"beginner" guides are more suited (at least in my experience of teaching) to
older students. I'd also like to see some more material on the goals/ideals of
Wikipedia (as that seems a better start point before leaping into account creation :)).
Also I noticed that a lot of the focus is on editing or contributing Wikipedia. I've
approached this from a slightly different perspective - which is that most of the kids I
will be talking to aren't interested in writing (and probably aren't yet capable
of doing so) a Wikipedia article. On the other hand I aim to teach them about using WP as
a resource (and the potential pitfalls) as well as trying to get them to treat it with
respect (i.e. quit the vandalism).
Is there a place on Outreach where discussion of education/teaching materials is
happening?
Tom
On 1 June 2011 17:15, Alex Stinson
<<mailto:stinsoad@dukes.jmu.edu>stinsoad@dukes.jmu.edu<mailto:stinsoad@dukes.jmu.edu>>
wrote:
"High school professors." Yikes! Meant teachers, not professors. I thought I
fixed that in a second read. Been working with universities for too long.
Tom, that sounds like something that could really use some development in the way of
documented techniques or presenting the information. You may want to check out the stuff
on the Wikimedia Foundation bookshelf project for materials you can destribute instead of
making all of them yourself
(<http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bookshelf>http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bookshelf).
We also have been developing a fair amount of stuff at the education portal on outreach,
though still a work in progress
(<http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education>http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education).
Alot has already been developed in fairly professional ways, it just needs to be applied
in the class room,
Alex
On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:01 PM, Thomas Morton
<<mailto:morton.thomas@googlemail.com>morton.thomas@googlemail.com<mailto:morton.thomas@googlemail.com>>
wrote:
Chris,
Yes, that was my impression too - I have some ideas/proposals to try and bring into play
but didn't want to step on top of an active project that I'd missed :P
I'm based in Lincolnshire.
Alex,
I've been keeping a close eye on the Ambassadors project - it looks like some great
work (yet another reason to wish I was a student again :)). Expanding that into schools is
a major project, but one that I think would net us some massive gains long term. I'd
be really interested in hearing about your work with the high school professors.
In general:
I've been interested in education for a while; I'm a scout leader here & my
parents have their own business doing educational visits to schools on the topic of
astronomy (so I have fairly extensive experience of that sort of "business
model"). The reason I have a specific interest now is that I've been approached
to look at doing an evening class on computers and the internet at a local secondary
school. One of the topics I want to cover is Wikipedia and WP editing.
I could put together some teaching material & release it for others to use on an
ad-hoc basis, but I think there is loads more we could expand into if WMUK were behind it
- stuff like working with the teaching bodies to get WP recognised as a resource, and
perhaps even worked into the curriculum (at the very least work with them to provide
useful material for teachers/students about Wikipedia). In fact, something like the
training events Cancer Research people (but for teachers) would be really interesting to
explore.
Another off-hand idea; it would be great to try and team up with some of the GLAM
institutions to run educational days (i.e. have groups of kids turn up to learn about
stuff using local and Wikipedia content, and to get an introduction to Wikipedia).
And more; we could use WMUK resources to train up and support Wikipedia volunteers who
want to go into the classroom - because teaching kids can be damned hard!
There's a lot to focus on, but I think it is one of our most important outreach areas
in the UK.
Tom
On 1 June 2011 16:40, Chris Keating
<<mailto:chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com>chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com<mailto:chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com>>
wrote:
I think it's been hibernating for a while. I haven't heard it mentioned at all
since the new Board took office.
Of course, if someone wants to pick up the ball and run with it, that would be very
welcome. Whereabouts are you, Tom?
Regards,
Chris
On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Thomas Morton
<<mailto:morton.thomas@googlemail.com>morton.thomas@googlemail.com<mailto:morton.thomas@googlemail.com>>
wrote:
Hey all,
What is the status of our work with schools/education?
<http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives/Schools_project>
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives/Schools_project seems to be a little stagnant,
there are references to other School interactions on the Wiki (including a link to a
hidden office page about the educational budget).
Is any of this still active?
I only ask because I've been approached locally to do some in-school work relating to
Wikipedia and it occurred to me that this is a major area we could be focusing on.
I've got a decent amount of experience working with children, schools and educators
and it would be great to contribute that on a wider scale.
If none of those projects are particularly active, would anyone be interested in working
on this (including volunteering to go into schools and youth groups)?
Tom / ErrantX
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Based at the ILRT, University of Bristol: <http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/>
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