Education/Newsletter/Feb 2017
This monthly newsletter showcases the Wikipedia Education Program. It focuses on sharing: your ideas, stories, success and challenges. Check out our past editions. You can also volunteer to help publish the newsletter. Join the team!
Volume 6 | Issue 1 | February 2017
In This Issue
Featured Topic
The newsletter gets a fresh update, thanks to your ideas and contributions! For future editions we can use: more volunteers, more discussion, more great articles. read more...
Tighe touches on a common challenge that impacts education programs: The greatest resource that our Movement has is human power and energy. The volunteers and staff that run education programs work extremely hard and are very passionate about their jobs. The amount of energy and work one human being can put into an activity does have limits, however. It’s not an unlimited and “free” resource, although we oftentimes think of it that way. read more...
From the Community
On October 2013, an innovative, for-credit, elective course dedicated to Wikipedia opened at Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University. The semester-long course (13-14 weeks), called "Wiki-Med", had a simple idea in mind – give students an opportunity to sharpen their academic, digital and collaborative skills, while contributing high quality medical content to Wikipedia; or in other words – ensure students' academic work makes a difference and has a positive impact not only on them, but also on the broader community, by curating their work in Wikipedia and its sister projects. read more...
During 2015-2016 we carried out four activities called "Wikilesa", designed to edit existing information on Wikipedia about the Human Rights Violations that took place in Argentina during the last Military Dictatorship (1976-1983). With our partner Cosecha Roja, a specialized news portal about justice and human rights, we trained teachers, university students, activists and researchers to learn how to use Wikipedia and how to edit existing information, improve and create new content. read more...
The pilot cooperation program for the autumn term at the Basque Public University was completed in December 2016. A fruitful edit-a-thon in a privileged setting propelled the run-up to the deadline. Following a positive outcome, the wiki program is set for a follow-up in the winter term.read more...
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Universities are getting ready to join the Education program in Finland during 2017. read more...
This is the story of the establishment of a WikiClub called Mrgavan WikiClub, located in Mrgavan town, Armenia. This could not happen if a student from the Mrgavan High School - Christian Ginosyan did not propose to open a WikiClub in his village. read more...
Argostoli Evening School has been active on the Wikimedia projects for ten years now. This year's tenth-grade project on the wild flora of Kefalonia introduces the principles of Citizen Science to school projects by getting the students involved in editing Wikispecies and exploring biodiversity read more...
From the Education Team
Nichole of the WMF Education Team has been accepted as a featured speaker for the 2017 Asian Conference on Technology in the Classroom. She will present a 90 minute workshop that will give educators a basic understand of why Wikimedia projects belong in the classroom and the basic tools and resources available to start a project. read more...
The WEP was represented by Tighe Flanagan at the Free and Open Source Software Initiative, hosted by the Sultan Qaboos University in Oman in February 2017. The organizers and attendees were eager to learn more about using Wikipedia in the classroom as a teaching tool. The presentation focused on some unique characteristics about Arabic Wikipedia. read more...
We would like to invite you to participate in the "A Hundred Words" Campaign! In this campaign, we are creating a picture card deck that any facilitator can use for ice breakers during events and activities across the movement. To participate in the campaign, you simply choose a picture from Wikimedia Commons and submit it to a corresponding word from our word list or pin it to our Pinterest page. read more...
The Education Collab moves to open membership. read more...
In the News
NPR Higher Ed article on the value of having students edit Wikipedia. The article features WikiEdu and LiAnna Davis! read more...
A Business Insider article about the value of sharing expertise in online communities. Features May Hachem! read more...
A nice article about how open source technology is helping students in Tanzania have access to quality educational opportunities. It mentions Wikipedia as part of a free digital library collection that is available to students offline. read more...
Signpost Special Issue: Wikipedia in Education
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, edited jointly with the Wikimedia Research Committee and republished as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter. This month's edition focuses on research about the role of Wikipedia in education. read more...
Check back next month for new featured topics, community stories, and WEP news!