Talk:Wikimedia&Education

topic of discussion

OFFLINE/Locally hosted WIKI/Library

main points discussed

• No absolute boundary between Online / Offline (Locally hosted can be "online")
• Familiarising new users with Kiwix is time-consuming but necessary.
• Reduction of FILE SIZE important - as in WikiMed
• Regular updates not as crucial in Ed. as in Med.
• "Create Book" functionality is available but not user-friendly!
• teenagers quick to acquire new uses of devices

follow up actions

• Investigate/promote possibility of re-introducing "create own ZIM file" functionality in MediaWiki

user names

michaelgraaf GastelEtzwane vizem

Non-Wikipedia Wikimedia Projects (Wikispecies, Wiktionary, Commons etc) + Motivating Students

Challenges

• Documents, books, etc (the written sources) are scarce and have incomplete information in most of the languages of Côte d'Ivoire. The same problems exists in a big and diverse country like India which have 29 states and more than 29 languages.
• Côte d'Ivoire is developing the 3^rd most spoken language, because the 2^nd has no written sources.
• Côte d'Ivoire Wikimedians have worked on Wiktionary and they are planning to start contributing in Wikidata but due to lack of documentation in their local language, the newcomers find it difficult to start contributing to Wikidata.

Translation: Easy break-in for bilingual newcomers

• In order for newcomers to start contributing to projects like Wikispecies, Wikidata; translating labels/descriptions is one of the best ways. On Wiktionary as well, we can start with adding translations.
• The scope is extensive as countries with bilingual citizens eg. French/English or Hindi/English + one local language can easily start contributing by doing translations.

Higher education strategy

A 2 steps strategy was proposed:

1. Approach educators and engage the negative perceptions (and misconceptions) they might have about Wikipedia/Wikimedia
2. For those interested in and engaged by the previous discussion, provide deeper training in editing and actual process of integrating Wikipedia as al earning tool in their toolset.

For step 1, among other things, slides 12-15 of this presentation were discussed as part of engaging with educators. PDF also available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_as_a_toolset_for_Open_Education_publish.pdf

Wikipedia as a toolset for Open Education publish