Wiki & Education

There are several proposals and projects that have to deal with Wiki and Education. Many of these efforts are similar and are different mainly in details. As there is no coordination between these projects, there is little cooperation and it suggested projects are not seen as important within the wikimedia context.

There are some that argue that all our projects have something to do with education. Given the purpose of the wikimedia projects that is a true statements. However, we do not make enough use of the importance that we gain in this respect.

Kids at school and vandalism

Many, often bored kids, find it funny to vandalise wikipedia (as do I). As they often come from behind proxies, blocking such a user results in blocking a whole school. When vandalism is reported to the ISP, it typically does not lead to concrete action. When we are known by schools, we can in stead register the proxies and report vandalism to the school. This is proving to work well on the nl:wikipedia, where the kids are known to have to write articles with pictures and trimmings to make good.......

Language training

In many countries there is a policy that kids with a non-native mother tongue, should learn something about their mother tongue. There is money available per kid to give them training. There are several projects within wikibooks that teach a language. By using "language immersion training" and using storyboards, we can create situational material that can be used for many languages. Combine this with teachers willing to train pronunciation over the Internet using skype, and we could get some revenue for the foundation and for these teachers.

Cooperation with educational organisations

In many countries there are organisations that are about kids in education and the internet. Some, like Kennisnet in the Netherlands, have been asked by teachers to provide a wikipedia with better performance.term paper

These organisations have often VERY good access to the internet, they have professionals dealing with internet on a full time basis and, it would help us if they start using mediawiki for their own projects and host projects to improve the local performance.

See Also

Project proposal

• Wikikids a wiki for 8 - 13 years old.

External link

• Using Wiki in Education - Stewart Mader’s blog on issues related to wiki use in education.
• The Essential Guide to Using Wiki in Education