On 13 June 2012 09:19, Jon Davies
<jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
Great to have you steering this Charles.
From my view as someone who has been editing for less than two years and did it in isolation from any other wikimedians I would like to ahre a few thoughts.
1. For me the BIG leap was to understand that I COULD edit. Many, many people think we are a major corporation with edit slaves in lines at some giant warehouse. I found out we were a volunteer project from a French regional newspaper.
Lesson : we need t get the message out there as a movement, and especially as WMUK.
2. The next BIG moment was when I spotted something on WIkipedia that I knew was wrong and dared press the edit button.
Lesson - we need to be getting to people at or before this stage as much as possible to create our future generations of editors.
3. I can still remember how scary the htmllike text was but I was determined, found the offending bit and changed it. I can alos remember the 'wow' factor. 'Look at me - I edited Wikipedia and it didn't break!'
Lesson - this is what we can harness in training sessions and on-line through support.
4. I didn't know anything about reverters, policies, attributions, references etc etc. I just spotted something that was wrong and wanted to make it better. Now approaching my 1000's edit I know so much more and am a better editor but that first edit was important not just to me but to Wikipedia.
Lesson - Help people feel the joy before overwhelming them with too much policy and too many rules. Make the on-line resources simple, in plain English and bite sized.
5. I am lucky not have had an edit reverted (or innocuous perhaps) if my first edit had been destroyed that might have been my last and my huge wealth of obscure knowledge would have been list to the world.
Lesson - we need to support and protect our newbies. On-line support material can do this to some extent.
So let's find the best that exists already, create our own and help Charles achieve this.
We can use video, utube, all sorts of things.
This is to the side but have a look at this 'how to' vid that helped me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfUNxbSNGjw
On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 7:46 AM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
I have been asked to be project leader for Wikimedia UK's distance
learning project. Early days.
Let me try to clarify what all this is about. It is a subproject of
the training effort, which already has the actual training and
outreach calendar events, and the Training for Trainers (TfT) strand.
It is another piece in the jigsaw. The desired outcome is an online
community with a virtual learning environment (VLE) that is hosting
and developing teaching modules that will effectively teach Wikimedia
topics (in English, as of the moment).
So far the distance learning project (VLE project for short) has three
subprojects I want to announce:
(1) Content (i.e. topic policy and content scavenger hunt)
To start with there will be a defined scope, divided into two unequal
sections: Core and Outreach. For example at the first TfT workshop
last weekend there were four presentations: on talk page etiquette,
dispute resolution, GLAM and Wikipedia in Education. Of these the
first two are Core and the second two Outreach. The main thrust of the
project will be to get to the point where anyone can learn all the
Core topics in decent teaching modules that are designed to common
educational principles and standards. But Outreach is not going to be
off-topic.
This is an area where anyone can help right now. All content will be
CC-by-SA. Initially existing CC-by-SA text can be used to seed
modules. E.g. the whole Help: namespace on enWP: I'm talking to Peter
Coombe (User:The wub) about this, who is on a WMF fellowship working
over that material.
What I really need help with is with (a) FAQ-like material (what
people tend to ask us about) and its subset (b) standard OTRS queries.
There are lists of OTRS standard answers, I know. Please write to me
offlist with suggestions: "how to start an article" and "how to reuse
material" are typical. This is pretty basic to make sure the VLE
teaches what people want to learn.
(2) Moodle. Free-source course management system. When there is
something to discuss, moodle.org would be the place. If you have
Moodle expertise and would like to be involved, please let me know
offlist.
(3) Community. The acronym MBWL (i.e. Moodle-based but wiki-like). and
hashtag #wikimodule now exist: that was the easy part.
You will be glad to know that there are some policies too. There will
be "modules" and "good modules" and "featured modules". MBWL:GOOD says
that only good modules go public, and that pure lesson plans, or pure
distance learning modules without IRL notes, don't qualify as good. It
also says the procedure of grading an article good and so publishing
it will be under the control of the whole account-holding community,
and will be a box-ticking exercise. MBWL:FM states that grading a
module featured will be a threaded review process under the control of
the account holders who are also accredited via WMUK and TfT (this is
where things start to interlock). The rationale for this policy states
that the VFL regards debates on how people learn as off-topic there.
They are on-topic in other places, such as a page on uk.wikimedia.org
where anyone can debate the quality definition on the talk page, but
which is edited by trainers who have done the TfT course and so are at
least starting from common ground.
There is an existing education email list that may prove helpful for
detailed thrashing-out.
I shall be available at the WWI Editathon on Saturday if anyone wants
to chat about all this, or let me near a whiteboard.
Charles
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