Education/Newsletter/March 2013/Articles of Interest in other publications

U.S. professor shares student experiences

"New Media and Development Communications," Columbia University, Fall 2012

Anne Nelson, a professor from Columbia University participating in the Wikipedia Education Program United States, contributed a post to the Wikimedia Foundation blog last week on her experiences with the program. Many of her students are English as a second language learners, and she asked those students to contribute to Wikipedia in both their native languages and English, leading to a unique multilingual learning experience for both Anne and her students. Read more of her reflections on the project.

Spanish Wikipedia's art coverage grows thanks to professor Lila Pagola, a professor at the National University of Villa María in Argentina, started teaching with Wikipedia back in 2007. The lack of good information on the Spanish Wikipedia on topics related to art, her specialty, spurred her to work with her students to add articles on Latin American photography to Wikipedia, and she's been hard at work using Wikipedia in her classroom ever since. Read about her project in Argentina.

Swedish program shares learnings Sophie Österberg, the education program leader in Sweden, contributed a long post for the Wikimedia Foundation blog talking about her experiences so far as she has been having workshops with professors and launching the Wikipedia Education Program in Sweden, Wikipedia i utbildning. Sophie's post explains some of the mistakes she has made, and what she has learned from them. Her post encourages people worldwide to share learnings so we can ensure we are not repeating mistakes in different geographic regions. Read her post.

Contribuyen alumnos del Tecnológico de Monterrey a Wikipedia con información e imágenes de alta calidad (Students of the Tecnológico de Monterrey contribute information and high quality images to Wikipedia

This article (in Spanish) describes the various ways that ITESM (Mexico City campus) has been collaborating with Wikipedia both inside and outside the classroom. This report has also been sent for the ITESM system bulletin! [1]

Egyptian student becomes active Wikipedia editor Walaa Abdel Manaem, a master's student in Spanish at Cairo University, learned how to edit Wikipedia through the Cairo Pilot of the Wikipedia Education Program -- and shortly after she started translating articles from the Spanish Wikipedia to the Arabic Wikipedia, Walaa was hooked. Less than one year later, Walaa has more than 8,500 edits on the Arabic Wikipedia. She's created 68 articles, and is steadily climbing the list of the 100 most active editors on the Arabic Wikipedia. She's also assisting the education program as a Campus Ambassador at Cairo University. Read more about Walaa's experiences.

Students in Greece add photos to Commons

Mina with her students.

Mina Theofilatou, an instructor at Argostoli Evening High School in Kefalonia, Greece, wrote a post for the Wikimedia Foundation blog explaining her project to add photographs to Wikimedia Commons, the free image repository project. Mina and her students have embarked on two projects: one to catalog edible species on the island of Kefalonia, and one to photograph every village on the island. Learn more about Mina's project by reading the blog post.

Teaching assistant works to improve Arabic Wikipedia

Doaa presents on Wikipedia editing.

Doaa Seif, a teaching assistant at Ain Shams University's faculty of Al-Alsun, is an active Wikipedia Ambassador in the Wikipedia Education Program in Egypt. Doaa was featured on the Wikimedia Foundation's blog in a post explaining her desire to improve the availability of information on the Arabic Wikipedia. The two courses that Doaa is a teaching assistant for both participated in the Egypt program last term, and she's also organized workshops teaching students how to edit. Read the profile on Doaa.