Education/Newsletter/August 2012/"Wikipedia for Seniors": Upcoming Presentation at WikiCon 2012 (Austria)

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by Meike Westerhaus

Since 2011, Wikimedia Germany and its partners have been implementing a project called “Silberwissen” (Silver Knowledge) with the aim of encouraging older adults to become active Wikipedia authors. There will be a presentation of the project at WikiCon in Dornbirn (Austria), a Wikimedia conference of German-speaking Wikipedians, on 1st September 2012, 11:00h.

With their life experience, know-how and relatively high amount of free time, older adults have the potential to become an important group among Wikipedia authors. This is why Wikimedia Germany decided to directly target this group as early as 2008. The current project Silberwissen is being implemented within the research project “Third Age Online” (TAO), which investigates the opportunities of including older adults into online communities. Silberwissen activities are evaluated with the help of the Centre for General Scientific Continuing Research of Ulm University (Germany).

Silberwissen includes a series of workshops in different locations, in which older adults are motivated to become Wikipedia authors and given the skills necessary to contribute to the encyclopedia. The presentation at WikiCon will give an overview of the aims and methods of the project, the experiences made in different locations and the reactions of participating older adults

– and other topics, depending on the interest of those present.

More information on...

... Silberwissen: Silverwissen] (in German) or [[1] Silver_Knowledge (in English).

... the TAO Project: [[2] (English, German, French, Italian)

... WikiCon 2012: [3] (in German)