Education/Newsletter/October 2014/New classes and activities at Tec de Monterrey
By Leigh Thelmadatter (Tec de Monterrey/Wiki Learning)
Snippet: Eight classes, video documentation, over 1000 photos and a photo contest at Tec de Monterrey
During the past month, seven clases at Tec de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus have begun projects, mostly translation of articles from English to Spanish and photography. These classes range from 2 at the intermediate level (Remedial III) to advanced (Sello A). Their work is being documented both at the education extension in es wiki here] and in Outreach Wiki here as the education extension is project-specific. One course in advanced German, Alemán IV (taught by JesúsHerreradelRío), has completed a translation assignment, the first from German to Spanish at the school. This was a little more time consuming than the usual English-Spanish translations as es.wiki does not recognized much of the German-language coding (such as for references and images) and it was necessary to change these manually.
On September 26, a basic training session was held on campus for primary school teachers. This is part of the Mati Wiki project, which has the aim of expanding a current program in the use of smart phones for primary school mathematics to other activities. The pilot program will select ten students from each of three primary schools to write articles and otherwise document the neighborhoods where the schools are found. The purpose of this training session was to familiarize teachers with how to get involved with Wikipedia and provide support to participating students.
Tec de Monterrey has approved a project to start video documenting Wiki projects at the school. This has begun with the filming of the aforementioned German class and training for primary school teachers as well as a communications class taught by Paula Ricaurte.
The community service (servicio social) students working with Wikipedia this semester have so far completed over 70 articles in es.wiki and have uploaded over 1,000 photographs to Commons.
The third annual "Día de Muertos Estilo Wiki" (Day of the Dead Wiki Style) is scheduled to run from Oct 20 to November 8. Day of the Dead is an important cultural tradition in Mexico, with the aim of honoring the dead and ancestors. The aim of the contest is not only to document how it is observed in its numerous variations but also to encourage students and professors to consider Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia as learning platforms for class projects. This year, the contest as been expanded from Campus Ciudad de México to two others in the metropolitan area, Campus Santa Fe and Campus Estado de México, supported by local campus libraries whose staff received formal Commons training on Oct 16 to support participating students. The contest rules are here (in Spanish)
Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program at the Tec de Monterrey here.