Education/Newsletter/January 2015/Wiki Learning expands to three campuses at Tec de Monterrey
By Leigh Thelmadatter (Wiki Learning)
Snippet:Wikimedia activities are being expanded on three Mexico City area campuses as part of an innovation project called "Semana i" (or i Week).
Thanks to recognition of Wikimedia activities at the Tec de Monterrey campus under the name of "Wiki Learning," the effort to integrate Wikimedia activities into courses at the ITESM school system was made a part of a larger effort called "Semana i" (i Week) with the "i" standing for concepts such as "innovation" and "invention."
Semana i works by having students work on campus-wide projects instead of classes for a number of days as part of their coursework. As this semester is the pilot, students will work on projects for three days. Wiki Learning has been designated as one of the projects for students, primarily those in foreign language and Spanish expression classes on three campuses: Campus Ciudad de México (Mexico City), Campus Santa Fe and Campus Estado de México (State of Mexico). Working with Wikipedia/Wikimedia has been developing on the Ciudad de México campus for several years now, but the experience is a new one for the other two.
Since December, we have been holding training sessions for professors, with support activities to continue through the Spring 2015 term. The goal is that all 90+ professors on these campuses will do at least one simple Wikipedia/Wikimedia activity in their classes before the three days of Semana i. For those days, the campuses are planning edit-a-thons, with the goal of uploading files or improving current files in Wikimedia Commons, as well as article translation from English, French and German Wikipedias into Spanish. A select number of students, nominated by their professors, will work on the creation of new articles. It is not yet known how many students will participate in the edit-a-thons, as students do have their choice of projects.
Professors working with article improvement and translation are in the process of putting their classes on the es.wiki course extension, es:Especial:Cursos, and those working with media files are creating categories for their classes in Commons at Category:Wiki Learning Spring 2015
In addition, 20 students who will work with Wikipedia for servicio social (or community service) credit have been recruited at the first training session on 24 January. Four are returning students: es:Usuario:Natalia0893, es:Usuario:MaríaJoséFelgueresPlanells, es:Usuario:A01333649 and es:Usuario:LuisQuiroz1618 and various of the new students are those who joined because "Wikiservicio" was recommended to them by one of these four.
Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program at ITESM here.