New subject: Schools projects - evening courses

3 Jun 2011

My Mum is active in her local branch of the University of the third
age, they struck me as a perfect partner for such an evening course.
Especially if the UK chapter were to offer the U3A a grant for hiring
in approved Wikipedians to deliver said course.

But please call it something other than "creating your own wiki page".
Aside from winding up the deletionists,  that risks letting people
think they own a page, or that they can create a page about them. Your
hobby/profession/neighbourhood and Wikipedia would be OK, someone else
will I hope come up with something snazzier.

But this definitely has legs.

We could also make use of a photographers version to explain commons
to local photography clubs.

WereSpielChequers

On 1 June 2011 22:36, Roger Bamkin &lt;victuallers(a)gmail.com&gt; 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 &lt;stinsoad(a)dukes.jmu.edu&gt; wrote:

 There is an education list
 at 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
 &lt;morton.thomas(a)googlemail.com&gt; 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 &lt;stinsoad(a)dukes.jmu.edu&gt; 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). 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). 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
 &lt;morton.thomas(a)googlemail.com&gt; 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 &lt;chriskeatingwiki(a)gmail.com&gt; 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
>> &lt;morton.thomas(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote:
>>>
>>> Hey all,
>>> What is the status of our work with
>>>
schools/education? 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
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikimedia UK mailing list
>>> wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
>>> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
>>> WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
>>>
>>
>>
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>> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
>> WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
>>
>
>
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 --
 Roger Bamkin
 (aka Victuallers)

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Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Schools projects - evening courses