Education/Newsletter/May 2014/Articles of interest in other publications

Articles of interest in other publications

Wikipedia Education programs of Wikimedia Armenia
Video of participants of Wikipedia Education Program in Ayb High School, Armenia.

Educational programs are one of the primary programs being addressed by Wikimedia Armenia. To date, they have been implemented in seven high schools and select departments at various universities. Contrary to what we see in other countries, today, the most active contributors within Wikimedia Armenia are high school students, who, to date, have created more than 2,110 articles and continue their active participation well passed their assigned courses. Read the full post on the Wikimedia blog. More files in Wikimedia Commons

Wikipedia Education Program students keep editing in Arabic long after their assignments are finished

Looking back at February 2014, Wikipedia Education Program alumni from Egypt, Jordan and Algeria accounted for 3.6% of the active editors and 8.2% of the very active editors on Arabic Wikipedia. Overall, the program in the Arab world has seen some interesting retention numbers, close to 6% of former program participants edited that month. While our theory of change and goal for the program remains focused on quality content, not editors, it is nice to see that we are having an effect in the growth of Arab Wikipedia. Read the full post on the Wikimedia blog.

Adrianne Wadewitz, 37, Wikipedia Editor, Dies in Rock Climbing Fall

Noam Cohen of The New York Times writes this tribute to the life of academician and Wikipedian Adrianne Wadewitz. Read the full story in The New York Times

Berkeley’s Wikipedian helps unlock scholarly silos

Kevin Gorman was appointed as the first Wikipedian-in-residence for the University of California, Berkeley to help students publish academic information in Wikipedia. In this article, Kevin discuss the importance of having students collaborate online to help complete the encyclopedia. Read the full story in the Times Higher Education

Wikipedia editing for university library internships

In the final term of 2013, the University of Pittsburgh libraries ran a Wikipedia-focused internship course for two undergraduates majoring in history. The head of the archives and one of the student have now published a paper about the project: "Increasing the Discoverability of Digital Collections Using Wikipedia: The Pitt Experience".

A call for historians of science to use Wikipedia in the classroom

In an article for the most recent issue of the History of Science Society's newsletter, Sage Ross highlights the opportunity for history of science professors to get involved with Wikipedia classroom assignments. Read the article.

Using Wikipedia in the classroom a cautionary tale (Updatedx2)

This is a blog post by Meghan Duffy, a professor who contributed this article to the Dynamic Ecology blog. Here she writes about a negative experience by one of her students working in Wikipedia, basically having her well-referenced and well-developed rewrite of an article reverted by a Wikipedian repeatedly. The comments, many by the en.wiki community, are worth reading as well. Read the blog post.