Which visual editor? I thought there was no true visual wikimedia
editor, since it would have to basically be its own server, what with
templates, etc.
Banaticus
On 20 December 2011 18:12, Asaf Bartov <abartov(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi, Jan.
Thanks for sharing this! It's very valuable to see the different models of
engagement with educators around the world. I had been involved in some
educational outreach myself in Wikimedia Israel, and they have been doing a
lot more of that in the past few months, and I hope they could share their
experiences and models (in English) soon too.
Some comments in brief about your report:
1. the GEP operated by the WMF is certainly only _one_ model, and obviously
neither the only nor the first model to successfully engage with education.
It is very likely that the GEP model is not suitable for all geographies,
and that we don't have the resources to engage in the GEP model everywhere.
So it's great to collect models-that-work, for others to learn from and
maybe try.
2. re the community's openness to technical features such as the visual
editor: it's best to start a conversation about it sooner rather than later.
Has the visual editor been discussed at all in the cswp community? Have
people played with the demo?
3. Do you have thoughts about how to expand work in the Czech Republic
without taking up so much of Chmee2's time? I.e. can this scale to support,
say, 20 concurrent classes?
Once again, thanks for sharing! It would be great to find a corner to
record this more lastingly, perhaps on the Outreach wiki. Is there anyone
on this list willing to curate this?
Cheers,
Asaf
On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 1:46 AM, Juan de Vojníkov <juandevojnikov(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
This is a cross mail to educational-l and WMCZ board.
Hi folks,
on December 12, 2011 seven Czech Wikipedians (mostly scollars and
researchers) met in a tearoom in Prague, Czech Republic to disscuss issues
relating cooperation between Wikipedia and an educational institutions. At
first some of the projects were presented and participants had a possibility
to ask details about these projects. Then broad discussion on different
topics continued.
At the time, there is one project running by the cooperation between
Wikipedians and teacher and one project which is runnig just by teacher
iniciative. Other ambassador x educational institution projects are in the
different stage of preparation (mostly attracting teacher and training).
There is not just interest from the side of Wikipedians to start such
cooperation, but also teachers directly come to use Wikipedia in the
classroom by the means of edditing it.
Seemingly the most successful project, running at this time on cs.wp, from
which we may learn is the cooperation between user:Chmee2[1] and a teacher
of ecology from the Institute for Environmental Studies from Faculty of
Science of the Charles University. Chmee2 was contacted at Wikikonference
2010 after presenting a project aiming to develop articles about protected
areas (=ecology) by a Ph.D. student, who introduce him to the teacher. Half
a year later around 30 students were instructed how to edit Wikipedia. If
they create NPOV, good article with references and images, they will recive
a credit. User Chmee2 periodically reads students work, repair it and offer
them a feedback. Thus the teacher doesn't have extra work with that. To the
end of the semester students present chosen protected area (e.g. via MS
PowerPoint) in class. Teacher and Chmee2 give them a feedback and together
with the teacher and other students they give them questions to push them to
think about the topic. Thus it gives students 2 values: a) they study and
understand the topic, b) they got variegation in education and good feeling
that their work will be useful. Chmee2 says: "The ambassador must have a
time for such project. While in U.S. people are proud of having an editing
experience with Wikipedia and they can have it in CV, in the Czech Republic
that is nothing special and there is a luck of motivation. Thus ambassadors
are old Wikipedians themselves."
So it seems, that this might be one of the models which may work in the
environment of the Czech Republic, while to see if other ambassador like
programs will work we have to wait some time.
Thus we spent quite a lot off time in discussing the motivation factor for
students, teacher and/or ambassadors. It seems in it there would be a need
of some credit system supporting ambassadors and/or teacher to become a
valuable part of such cooperation. But this encounter legal issue of schools
– you have to negotiate it with school functionaries. User:Hawkzn things it
might be possible, while User:JirkaDI sees it like structural problem.
Other "problems" comes when newbies coming to the Czech Wikipedia. There
is a luck of mentors for them and they have to face both technical
(wikisyntax, templates, standards) and social problems (unpleasant users,
lack of social interaction, just templates on their discussion page). Thus
we have agreed to focus on setting up some features from en.wp such gadget
Cite[2] or Wikilove. At this time User:Vojtech.dostal comes up with the
information that Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) developers is close to WYSIWYG
editor for Wikipedia, but user Chmee2 is afraid that most of the good tools
from WMF might be reject by the local community.
The group is not just aware how to motivate more people to get into the
cooperation and how to create friendlier environment for newcomers, but also
comes up with questions how to communicate an offer to a teacher to start
participate and how to motivate her/him to start up with the project. Thus
participants will share their experience via Wikipedia on WikiProject
EDU.[3]
Finally could be assumed that this first meeting and hopefully not last,
come up with a lot of answers and positive mood to continue with such work
and overstep problems which will come up. There is a common will to continue
in such work. Participants understand they should be slow in getting more
work and work together, but as every participant has some amount of internal
pride, they will probably work separately developing and testing new models.
Some of them call to go to younger leaners (high school, elementary), others
disagree and call to join seniors (via lifelong learning courses).
If you understand Czech you can joint us via Ambassadors's page[4] and see
there also our projects and their state.
Best regards,
Juandev
Chmee2
[1]
http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedista:Chmee2
[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_expander
[3]
http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedie:WikiProjekt_EDU
[4]
http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedie:Ambasadorstv%C3%AD
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Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia Foundation
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