Education/News/November 2017/WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique

The WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique kicks in 4 francophones African countries

Author: Anthere

Summary:

The WikiChallenge African Schools is a writing contest held in primary schools in several African countries (Mali, Tunisia, Madagascar, and Guinea). The contest takes place during October and November 2017 with primary school children adding Vikidia articles using the WikiFundi software.

Contest launch in Mali

Training provided by Wikimedia Tunisia to the local Tunisian facilitators

The WikiChallenge African Schools is a writing contest among primary schools that is being held in several francophone African countries in October and November 2017. The writing contest is organized by Wiki In Africa. The focus of the contest are primary schools in Mali, Tunisia, Madagascar, and Guinea. Due to the age target (9 to 11), articles written by the kids are being added to http://fr.vikidia.org (the little sister encyclopedia of Wikipedia aimed at kids aged between 8-15 years). The schools that are taking part are members of the Orange Foundation's Digital Network. They are equipped with tablets, a raspberry PI (with content and the m:wikifundi) software provided by the m:WikiAfrica team. WikiFundi allows the children to edit and add content as if they were editing on Wikipedia without an internet connection. Any pictures produced will be added on Wikimedia Commons; and Vikidia articles will be transferred and adapted to Wikipedia where relevant.

The total number of schools that registered for the contest amounted to over 100 (though it is unlikely that all of those will participate in the end...). Most, if not all, of those schools are not connected to the Internet, which has raised special and interesting challenges. The contest is supported by the Orange Foundation. Locally, staff from Orange offices or from friends of Orange are in contact with the schools and facilitate the training the teachers and provide support to the schools.

• The local activities may be followed (to a certain extent...) here on a Facebook dedicated page .
• A beautiful story about the contest may be found here in French.
• View event images at this category link

Tags: education, africa, wikiafrica, wikifundi