[Wikimediaau-l] Wikipedia and schools

Sat Dec 13 05:31:52 UTC 2008

MessageWell, I just went through all the Australian Prime Minister articles to see what state they were in - I expect that we'd ideally want to include all of these if possible.  It took me about half an hour to do, although some of that was spent messing with templates and the like.  The results are here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australia/Australian_Schools_Selection/Article_Assessment_Workspace

In addition to seeing what we ideally should include, it also gives a good idea on how good our coverage on this topic is (my verdict: good, but could be better).  

How do I envision this being delivered?  Hopefully we can stick it on some hosting somewhere, put it under the WMAU domain name, and give teachers that address (hopefully getting it whitelisted by the various state education departments).  We then put prominently on the main page "There are 2.5 million more articles at http://en.wikipedia.org".

With that said, it's a fair chunk of work, although a good percentage of the legwork has been done by the team that put together the existing Schools Selection; it's an excellent base to build upon and they have really done a fantastic job.  To use an encyclopædia analogy, I see this project as an offering extra volume or two to a general encyclopædia for specifically Australian subjects.

So what has to be done?  Ideally, we find out what teachers and educators want, and include that content.  If any of those topics are poorly covered or not covered at all, we collaborate to improve that content (this is a benefit that flows back into the main WP project, as well).  Once we have our selection, we pick "good" revisions that do not have any vandalism, are properly cited, etc.  We make a copy of them somewhere (a private Wiki, perhaps), and remove anything WP-specific that doesn't make sense on a partial snapshot copy, such as disambig headers.  We also remove any unfree media that might be in the article.  We add in a link at the bottom of each page to the "live" version of the article on the main WP site.  We do any copyediting that has to be done.

Now, doing all this will be a pretty big job, but I'm sure its nothing we can't handle.  The big challenge at this point is talking to educators and finding out what they want.

In any case, I'm open to ideas, as I'm sure there are things I've not considered yet.  I don't have any special claims of ownership over this little mini-project, so if ýou're interested, please go and edit the page and jot down your own thoughts!

Cheers,
Craig

-------------------
Craig Franklin
PO Box 1093
Toombul, Q, 4012
Australia
http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art, and Culture.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Pru Mitchell 
  To: 'Wikimedia-au' 
  Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2008 9:53 AM
  Subject: [personal] Re: [Wikimediaau-l] Wikipedia and schools

  Thanks Craig
  I can see some real potential here as a 'bridge' for schools coming to terms with concepts such as Wikipedia, and also for those with access issues (filters, bandwidth and costs). 
  How long do you envisage such a project would take? How much work do you think is involved?
  It may be possible to organise some assistance with this, but I don't have any concept of what process would be followed to develop this project.
  Could you give some 'how to' information as background?

  Many thanks, Pru
  Pru Mitchell 
  ph: 0433 551 204 
  me: me.edu.au/p/pru 
  e: pru.mitchell at bigpond.com 

    -----Original Message-----
    From: wikimediaau-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediaau-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Craig Franklin
    Sent: Thursday, 11 December 2008 9:38 PM
    To: Wikimedia-au
    Subject: Re: [Wikimediaau-l] Wikipedia and schools

    Okay, there seems to be a bit of interest here, so I've boldly created a subpage for planning:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australia/Australian_Schools_Selection

    At the moment it's really just my thoughts on the subject, but as the advice on the edit page says; feel free to edit it mercilessly.

    Cheers,
    Craig

    -------------------
    Craig Franklin
    PO Box 1093
    Toombul, Q, 4012
    Australia
    http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art, and Culture.

      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: Gnangarra 
      To: Wikimedia-au 
      Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 8:43 PM
      Subject: [personal] Re: [Wikimediaau-l] Wikipedia and schools

      I'd be up for that, cant let it have solely an Eastern States POV :)

      2008/12/11 K. Peachey <p858snake at yahoo.com.au>

        > Anyone for a mini-project then? =).  The existing SOS selection looks like
        > it'll be a good base, but adding more "Australian" themed articles to it
        > would probably be a nice attention grabber when we go talking to schools.
        >
        > Cheers,
        > Craig

        I would be! maybe a task-force for WikiProject Australia?
        And we would have to decide what "Australian" contents gets in, eg:
        iconic/well known tv shows/what history content gets in.

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      -- 
      GN.
      http://gnangarra.redbubble.com/

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