Education/Newsletter/June 2015/Articles of interest in other publications
Wikipedia translatathon at University College London
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36 post-graduate students at the UCL center for translation studies attended the translatathon: An editathon that aims at increasing content on WIkipedia by translating articles from a language to another. As all contributors were new to Wikipedia, the workshop started with an introduction about the editing basics followed by practical training. CenTraS, Wikimedia Gender Gap, Wikimedia Uk and Wikipedia ambassadors all worked together on organizing the event.
Wikimedia India signs an MoU with a local educational institution group to research on Wikipedia
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Wikimedia India signed a Memorandum of Understanding with a local educational institution group, SKP. The project aims at supporting Wikipedia in different Indian languages by focusing on engaging Engineering college students in MediaWiki and Indic language computing related technology development work. Lack of freely available computing tools for Indian languages is one of the challenges for the growth of Wikimedia projects in Indian languages. To address this specific issue, Wikimedia India will facilitate the setup of a Language Computing Lab at SKP Group of Institutions. Wikimedia India will also work to provide adequate learning opportunities for students and faculties in the technologies they work under this partnership.
Teaching my students to use Wikipedia
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In this article Dr. Adam Earnheardt, chairman of the department of communication at Youngstown State University, discusses how he has changed his attitude toward students using Wikipedia in Research. Many university professors do not allow students to use Wikipedia at all in their school work. Dr. Earnheardt was one of them until he decided to start guiding them to the right ways of research using Wikipedia without citing it.
Birzeit University wraps up a course on enriching Arabic content on Wikipedia
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Farah Jack Mustaklem, a Wikipedian from Ramallah led a course on editing Wikipedia for the students of Birzeit University in Palestine. The course included an introduction to Wikipedia editing basics and the different Wikimedia projects. The second day contributors met the Wikimedia Foundation staff, Tighe Flangan, Wikipedia Education Program manger for the Middle East and Africa and Lila Tretikov the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation who told them about the movement and Wikipedia Education Program in particular.
Read the full article here. (In Arabic)
Israel’s Wikipedians lead the way in education, technology
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Lila Tretikov the Executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation paid a visit to Israel this month, where she met The Israeli Prime Minister, local officials, Wikipedians and university students. In this interview with Jerusalem Post, Lila talked about the importance of using Wikipedia in education giving an example of 7th grade students who participated in a course to write articles about their city, Hertzliya.