Wikipedia Education Program/News/17 December 2013

Welcome to the Wikipedia Education Program Update -- a newsletter from the Wikimedia Foundation about efforts to bring Wikipedia into higher education classrooms. The newsletter is released on the first and third Tuesday of each month. To be notified of the latest issue, add this page to your watchlist or email LiAnna Davis (ldaviswikimedia.org), the Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager, to be added to the distribution list.

Egyptian students help close gender gap

The Wikipedia Education Program Egypt is successful not only in adding a large quantity of high-quality content to the Arabic Wikipedia, but it's also successful at challenging the gender gap. Three female students, May Hachem, Eman Sawabi, and Amira El-Gamal, were profiled in a post on the Wikimedia blog written by Samir El-Sharbaty, the volunteer leader of the Wikipedia Education Program Egypt. Samir's post explains how May, Eman, and Amira are adding articles about women to help close the systemic bias that comes from a significantly male contributor base. Read the article.

Students in Mexico contribute to Wikipedia, Commons

Wiki Borregos student club Fall 2013 Group Photo

Leigh Thelmadatter, a Wikimedian, Regional Ambassador, and Professor at ITESM Campus Ciudad de México, contributed a post to the Wikimedia blog about the activities on her school's campus last term. International Baccalaureate students contributed content to Wikipedia as part of their coursework, and undergraduate students also wrote articles on Wikipedia, translated articles to the Spanish Wikipedia, and added photos and sound files to Wikimedia Commons. See more about the busy term by reading Leigh's post.

Ole Miss offers open education class

A new graduate-level course at the University of Mississippi will be the first to add open components to a traditional course. Taught by Robert Cummings, the course features a two-week module covering open educational resources, or OER, and a six-week module in which students will learn to collaborate on Wikipedia articles. The course is open to Ole Miss students for course credit as well as to anyone who wants to participate in the course online. Learn more about the course.

Wiki Ed Foundation seeks executive director

The Wiki Education Foundation is a new non-profit organization which supports innovative uses of and content creation for Wikipedia and related projects in communities of teaching, learning and inquiry by encouraging collaboration among Wikipedia editors, educators and researchers and students. The Wiki Education Foundation's principal initiative is the Wikipedia Education Program in the United States and Canada, which connects Wikipedia editors with professors interested in using Wikipedia in their classrooms. The Wiki Education Foundation is now accepting applications for the post of Executive Director. See details of the job and how to apply.