Education/Newsletter/March 2016/Taiwanese students use Spoken Wikipedia as their service learning
By Shang Kuan Liang-chih, Reke Wang, and Dr. Yuwen Lai and (WMTW)
Snippet: Students contribute 46 entries of Spoken Wikipedia to Chinese Wikipedia for their service learning
Hsinchu is a city known for its high-tech industry. World-leading computer brands such as Apple and Acer all use components designed in Hsinchu Science Park located in the city. To nurture tech and engineering talents, there are several prestigious universities around the area, including National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) and National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), among others.
The Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at NCTU is the latest educational partner of Wikimedia Taiwan in the Spoken Wikipedia project. In this project, 10 freshmen from the department recorded Featured Articles from Wikipedia and uploaded the sound files onto Wikimedia Commons.
This work benefits visually-impaired readers of Wikipedia. It is also part of the students' service learning.
In the past fifteen years, Chinese Wikipedia has had only 44 spoken articles. But within the last 3 months, the students recorded and uploaded 46 additional articles.
Right now, the team is led by Dr. Yuwen Lai, the professor who initiated this collaborative project. Dr. Lai is also advising a graduate student from Indonesia to follow the same recording protocol for Spoken Wikipedia project in Bahasa Indonesia.
Note: This text was first published in the Wikimedia East and Southeast Asia Newsletter, January 2016.
Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Taiwan here.