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Education/Newsletter/June 2017

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This Month in Education

Volume 6 | Issue 5 | June 2017

This monthly newsletter showcases the Wikipedia Education Program. It focuses on sharing: your ideas, stories, success and challenges. You can see past editions here. You can also volunteer to help publish the newsletter. Join the team! Finally, don't forget to subscribe!

In This Issue
Featured Topic


Education and the Wikimedia Movement Strategy


From the Community

Forming the "Wikipedia & Education" User Group

Lernapat WikiClub: Our WikiClub teaches us to collaborate effeciently

From idea to award

The Education Collab meets in Yerevan

New study measures student learning outcomes from Wikipedia assignments

Integrating app development into Wikipedia in Education programs


From the Education Team

Program and Events Dashboard updates

Education at IberoCONF 2017

Introducing the Education Team's new intern

In the News

Wikipedia in the Classroom: developing information literacy, online citizenship and digital research skills

Enseigner Wikipédia par les anecdotes

Three vignettes that help to dive into Wikipedia (in French)

Student perceptions of writing with Wikipedia in Australian higher education


Featured Topic

In the beginning of June, a group of global education program leaders, formerly known as the Wikipedia Education Collaborative, gathered in Yerevan for a planning meeting about the future of education within the Wikimedia movement. Thanks to the timing and the current stage of the Wikimedia movement strategy, we discussed the five themes and how education programs fit in to each context.




From the Community

Letter announcing the formation of the Wikipedia & Education User Group




The Lernapat WikiClub is one of the most active WikiClubs of Wikimedia Armenia. The WikiClub coordinator - Armenuhi Voskanyan and the clubbers share their experience and thoughts.




On May 18, the international day of Museums, the first Wiki Club in Macedonia received an award from the Macedonian Association of Museums (ICOM). Each year the ICOM distributes awards to the best active museum projects in Macedonia.




Collab members discuss how the Yerevan meeting went and what they liked best about visiting Armenia.




The Wiki Education Foundation (Wiki Ed) released the results from the most comprehensive study ever undertaken to evaluate student learning outcomes from Wikipedia assignments. The study concludes that Wikipedia assignments provide students valuable digital/information literacy, critical research, teamwork, and technology skills, and students are more motivated by these assignments than they are by traditional writing assignments.




The Argostoli Evening School has developed an Android app with their work on Commons, Wikidata and Wikispecies for offline and/or online field use to acquaint the public with the abundant edible plants growing wild in their island's natural surroundings. The school's' innovative use of MIT's CC-licensed AppInventor environment in language projects will be presented by their teacher Mina Theofilatou at the Celtic Knot Conference in Edinburgh in early July.




From the Education Team


A short summary of updates and improvements to the Program and Events Dashboard as described by Sage Ross on Facebook.


IberoCONF, held in Buenos Aires on June 10-12, was the meeting for the Affialiates of IBEROCOOP to meet and discuss the movement's activities in their regions. Among the topics, a full morning was dedicated to discussing education programs: actual and future projects at local and regional level.





Please join us in welcoming Abel to the team for the summer!




In the News


A very informative article written by Ewan McAndrew on the value of Wikipedia in Education and how it is being used at the University of Edinburgh.




"Teaching Wikipedia with anecdotes" is both a collection of vignettes depicting the complexity of Wikipedia and a manifesto to teach Wikipedia as a digital culture case study. (in French)




The vignettes are presented as short stories (video + linkified text) that helps diving into Wikipedia. In the first one, the French government learns the hard way how to edit Wikipedia by the rules. In the second one, the upload of a photograph to Commons changes the law.In the third one, Philip Roth learns what is a reliable sourcing. (in French)


L'article d'Alain Marleix revisité

Le selfie du macaque

Je suis Philip Roth




New publication examining student perception of editing Wikipedia in class in Australian higher education. Surveys were combined with focus groups and case studies. The paper also includes a useful history section of when editing Wikipedia in academic settings started. Full citation: Cummings, R., & DiLauro, F. (2017). Student perceptions of writing with Wikipedia in Australian higher education. First Monday, 22(6). doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.5210/fm.v22i6.7488

Thank you for reading!

Check back next month for new featured topics, community stories, and WEP news!