Hi Josie,
I reread the blog post, and am thinking you will want to keep something in mind for the selection process some:
In my mind, the project at the local level in Liecester to be replicate-able at scale and, in the words of the call ,"high impact", requires the availability for this to be digitally native (and preferably within the Wikimedia ecosystem, whether as an integrated app on Tools Lab or on Wikipedia like the Wikipedia Adventure): otherwise your investment has only a limited impact, for a very limited difference in investment (we are talking on orders of magnitude differences in impact because of the ready global audience the wikimedia community can offer), could make the work very hard to translate into other communities/languages/cultural locations and other audiences. The Wikimedia community, and hundreds of libraries have already created small activities, guides, and curriculums that can teach basic digital, research and information literacy around Wikipedia (thats a relatively common practice, though executed at varying levels of success); innovation and impact would come from something that takes the core concept of those activities, and multiplies it beyond geographic and purely interpersonal communities.
If the testing phase for the tools is largely local, and tailored for a local impact that's awesome: however, from the more strategic level there is a lot of room for something like the proposed literacy item to have a legacy (globally?) by expanding and scaling (and such an activity would fit within the strategic interests of a number of organizations and volunteer communities who would spend energy scaling the materials, like The Wikipedia Library, The Wikipedia Education Program, and advocates for digital literacy more broadly (i.e. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation); esp. if the consultants have the expertise in gaming that you identified in the call). In particular, if the activity could be done on a mobile device: both the student audience that you are working with and new internet users in other parts of the world are entering the web via mobile devices.
I would be gladly be available for consultation within my role in the Wikipedia Library.
Cheers,
Alex Stinson
On Jun 11, 2015 1:36 PM, "Josie Fraser" <
josie@josiefraser.com> wrote:
Hi Alex, and thanks for the encouraging reply. The format that the activities and games take will be determined by the team appointed in consultation with school staff and young people. They may be web hosted but not web based for example, and it's likely they will include activities for groups. We've put up a little more info on our blog: Wikipedia - support for schools |
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Wikipedia - support for schoolsWe are really excited about our latest project, which will produce games based resources to enhance Year 9 learners (13-14 years old) engagement with, and understan... |
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The Wikipedia Adventure game is great - I'll be sure to pass on the link and your contact details to the team appointed (if they aren't already aware of them).
Many thanks! Josie
Hi Josie,
That sounds like a really interesting project. At the Wikipedia Library, we have been thinking a lot about readerly literacy in Wikipedia (and hope to build a portal to expose people to research literacy information), and the age group that you are targeting these materials for, would be fairly good for a public audience as well. Will this work product/game based learning material have to be in an on-wiki format?
It would be awesome if we could distribute it more broadly, while keeping people on Wikipedia. I am thinking the game-architecture used for the The Wikipedia Adventure (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Adventure ) would allow for such a piece of information to be shared with members of the editing community and become a standard link on things like welcome templates.
Cheers,
Alex Stinson
