On 26 January 2010 00:22, Andrew Turvey andrewrturvey@googlemail.comwrote:
Do you think these are worthwhile things to spend our money on? Is there
anything else you think should be added to the list?
Thanks for this Andrew,
I think that, in addition to the GLAM sector outreach (which I definitely think is worthwhile), we should be considering outreach into the educational sector also. Previous initiatives have centred on Wikipedia Academies [1], [2] - which I think would be useful to introduce to a UK audience (or audiences). This has so far been aimed at higher education/academia - but we could also be addressing schools in various ways (and for both teachers and students). Personally, I think this would be a more UK-specific use of funds than the usability initiative - though I don't know what ideas you had for that. (Hmm, see: *)
I know we have a schools project [3] - has anything concrete been done so far? (Eek! I've only just now realised there's a specific mailing list for the project!)
Cormac
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Academy [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academy [3] http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives/Schools_project
* Schools outreach could involve both face-to-face meetings/workshops, and online workspaces. It might be an idea to set up a wiki space for schoolkids, based on using and extending Wikimedia projects. Perhaps this could be done by carving out a space within Wikiversity - or creating a new one alongside it. In either case, I think we would need a significantly easier to edit interface than we currently have - which could tie in both outreach and usability. Just a thought...