Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-03-26/Education report

Wikischools: High schools outreach for Catalan Wikipedia
While the Wikipedia Ambassador Program has worked with college-level courses, pre-college education has been the focus of the Viquiescoles project ("Wikischools") at the Catalan language Wikipedia, with the 2012 edition already underway. This is an initiative promoted by Amical Viquipèdia (an association of Catalan-speaking Wikimedians) that gathers teachers for an editing workshop that shows both the basics of using Wikipedia, and the advantages of using it in classrooms. This teachers' workshop is later complemented with a competition where the teachers' students draft Wikipedia articles on a separate wiki, qualifying for various prizes. The best articles are then transferred to Catalan Wikipedia.

Wikischools exhibits peculiarities that make it a unique project: it combines teachers from different parts of the Catalan-speaking territories (and thus encourages the exchange of views and experiences); moreover it includes elements of reflection that go beyond a simple technical workshop to make the program an opportunity to discuss issues such as shared knowledge, the role of students in class, the actual use of new technologies in education and the promotion of critical thinking, among others.

In this year's edition, 16 teachers from 15 high schools are participating in the program. Teachers from both secondary schools and vocational schools are represented.

The program began in 2010 in the Balearic Islands, and in 2011 a test phase was conducted simultaneously in several territories, with the result that around 70 articles were included on Wikipedia. This year, the organisers expect to exceed those numbers, and hope to be attentive to the evolution of the newcomers into the next generation of full Wikipedians, whose contributions you will soon be able to read in the Catalan Wikipedia.

Universities unite for Mexico GLAM Editathon
On 3 March 2012, Mexico had its first ever edit-a-thon, held at the Museo de Arte Popular (Popular Art Museum) in the historic center of Mexico City. While numerous edit-a-thons had been held in various institutions, one important element of the success of this event was the involvement of two of Mexico’s major institutions of higher education.

Students from ITESM-Campus Ciudad de México and the newly formed student group at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa joined with Wikimedia México to create six new articles, five in Spanish and one in English: Palo fierro (ironwood carving), Carlomagno Pedro Martínez (ceramicist), Colorantes naturals (natural dyes) (a translation from the English Wikipedia), Cerámica de Mata Ortiz (Mata Ortiz ceramics), Familia Soteno (Soteno family) and (in English) Alfeñique in Mexico.

This collaboration among Wikipedia groups not only made the event a success, but also allowed for members of said groups to connect face-to-face and discuss future events with mutual support.

Notes in chalk

 * Dramatic Literature @ LSU articles go live: All student articles from the Intro to Dramatic Lit (Leigh Clemons) course have now been published in the mainspace – The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, Temptation, Fefu and Her Friends, and The Miss Firecracker Contest.
 * Early results from Northwestern School of Law: Four student articles from the Criminal Process (Professor Heather Winslow) course at Northwestern School of Law (one of the few law schools in the Education Program) have been marked as 'complete' – Cruz v. New York, Ham v. South Carolina, People v. Newton, and North Carolina v. Pearce.
 * Highlight student discussion: A number of University of British Columbia students engaged in a lively discussion on the structure of a bison conservation article, as a part of the North American Environmental History (Tina Loo) course.