[Foundation-l] MENA Education Program?

[aude]

On Nov 16, 2011, at 3:04 AM, Keegan Peterzell <keegan.wiki at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 1:39 AM, Barry Newstead <bnewstead at wikimedia.org 
> >wrote:
>
>> Hi Katie,
>> Just to build on Moushira's response to tackle your questions a bit
>> further.


Thank you Moushira and Barry for the replies.

I won't give a full reply just yet, since I am typing on my phone...  
except for some reply to Keegan now

>>
>> On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 5:26 AM, aude <aude.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Erik, Sue, Frank, et al,
>>>
>>> Can you please say more about the plans for a Middle East education
>>> program? (yes I have read notes from the recent trip on outreach  
>>> wiki)
>>>
>>> What is the timeframe? Who is going to run it? Will you establish a
>>> "trust" there? Where will the office be?
>>>
>>
>> We are planning a pilot in Cairo, but have not yet firmed up the  
>> details.
>> Frank, Annie and Moushira will spend a week in Cairo in December to
>> investigate the opportunity further and see when it would make  
>> sense to run
>> a small pilot.  We are hoping for February, but want to make sure the
>> conditions are right for success.
>>
>>>
>>> If the program is to be duplicated, I certainly hope there are not  
>>> the
>>> same issues with quality, as has happened in Pune.  What lessons  
>>> have
>>> you learned and what will you do differently?
>>>
>>
>> We do not plan on duplicating the Pune experience. For one, we want  
>> to do a
>> much smaller pilot. We also want to dig into questions regarding  
>> copyright
>> and student writing ability in Arabic before we start the pilot.   
>> Nitika
>> has captured a series of lessons on the pilot [1] and we are doing  
>> further
>> detailed evaluation work to ensure we mine the pilot fully.
>>
>>>
>>> Knowing that there is quite a backlog, last time I checked, with
>>> pending changes on Arabic Wikipedia, I am very concerned for the
>>> ability of volunteers there to handle a massive influx of new  
>>> content.
>>>
>>
>> This is a concern we share...and we discussed this with the community
>> members in Doha as Moushira mentioned.  No easy solutions here and  
>> we'll
>> need to innovate.
>
>
> Forgive me if I've missed something, I don't have time in the day to  
> follow
> all the links I'm provided in emails.
>
> Why exactly are we focusing on the Arabic Wikipedia and not localized
> dialects and languages?

Yes there are dialects, and if you want to call it a dialect, yes  
there is the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia which is mostly spoken and not  
necessarily written.  Arabic Wikipedia is appropriate here for the  
education project.

>
> Relying on a group to tutor as well as maintain a website doesn't  
> work very
> well when we branch from an internet forum to an encyclopedia.  The  
> Public
> Policy Initiative team did an amazing job in setting up standards for
> education programs and has expanded well in North America and the UK  
> and
> will continue to grow.  Growth means learning, and I think that we  
> learned
> from the India project on the English Wikipedia that international  
> projects
> need a bit more time and structure before we dive into creating  
> content.
>
> The west has a nasty habit of considering every Middle East country  
> as just
> speaking Arabic with little regard to Semetic languages.  I believe  
> there
> is a reason that the Arabic Wikipedia is vastly underused, staffed,  
> and
> content: people like writing in their native language.

Actually a lot of people (as with India) in Egypt and other places  
edit English Wikipedia. (about 50% edits to English / 50% to Arabic)

Cheers,
Katie



>  The Indian project
> is a different matter- I'd say the exception to the rule.  I can  
> understand
> Egypt and a couple other countries being interested in the Arabic  
> project,
> but in my amateur opinion such an undertaking by the WMF's education
> program should hold off for a bit until there's a solid community to  
> help.
> We can't use wikis and Wikimedia projects as educational tools without
> guidance from a solid community.
>
> Again, just my opinion as someone keenly following the use of  
> Wikimedia for
> education.  I hope the best for the MENA project.  Annie, Frank,  
> Moushira,
> any others involved I'm more than happy to help if needed.
>
>>
>
>
> -- 
> ~Keegan
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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