I believe this is what Asaf means: <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Visual_editor>. The demo is here: <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:VisualEditorSandbox>.

Pretty cool, if you ask me!

- GW

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 10:18 PM, Bart <banaticus@gmail.com> wrote:
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@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@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
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Education mailing list
>> Education@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
>>
>
>
>
> --
>     Asaf Bartov
>     Wikimedia Foundation
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Education mailing list
> Education@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
>

_______________________________________________
Education mailing list
Education@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education