Education/Newsletter/September 2016/Wikimedia Education Collaborative Announces New Global Education Campaign
By Loreen Ruíz (Intern at WMF)
Snippet: The Wikimedia Education Collaborative has started a new education campaign, the EduWiki Campaign, for teachers worldwide.
We are proud to announce the EduWiki campaign. The goal of the campaign is to engage teachers in using Wikimedia projects in their lessons, namely Wikipedia. Through the lesson plans that we have constructed, we want to challenge the traditional definition of education by telling teachers that “learning is editing,” keeping in mind that the definition of an “edit” on Wikipedia is not limited to editing text on a page—it can also mean adding images and references, translating, or creating content. The campaign targets educators who are planning on implementing our lesson plans in their classrooms.
With our lesson plans, the skills that students will learn are lasting: not only will they gain the technical knowledge of learning how to edit a page, they will also learn the values of collaborating with others, using free licenses, and practicing the values of the Wikimedia movement’s culture.
As we, members of WMF, work with the Education Collaborative to connect teachers with Wikimedia worldwide, we hope that we can train students to contribute valuable knowledge to Wikimedia projects and maybe also become lifelong Wikipedians. Through this campaign, we aim to advance the idea of digital literacy in education and strengthen the connections of our international community. The start of the campaign, scheduled to pilot on September 1st, is in conjunction with International Literacy Day on September 4.