Education/Newsletter/January 2013/Teaching the Teachers in UK Secondary Schools

Wikipedians John Cummings and Harry Mitchell ran a Wikipedia education and editing session with all secondary school ICT teachers in Gibraltar. John gave a presentation on the what Wikipedia is and an outline of the GibraltarpediA project (available here) assisted by Harry, he then guided the teachers through the basic mechanics of editing Wikipedia including User Page and Sandbox, Harry worked individually with people as this happened and documented the session. Handouts were provided of the Welcome to Wikipedia and Education Case Studies brochures and a Creative Commons leaflet.

The session was organised by Lilli Gomez, Education Adviser at the Department of Education in Gibraltar. Thanks to Doug Taylor for advice on timing and content of the presentation.

Harry, Doug and John have previously delivered sessions to pupils at Monmouth School as part of the MonmouthpediA project including teaching them how to edit Wikipedia and a photography event.

Great to see people so receptive to our mission. In the case of Monmouth and Gibraltar the students will see much more than a thousand new locally based articles in three dozen different languages.. All the secondary schools have an article about them and how amazing for 16 year olds to see their school, church and mosque described in Punjabi and Hindi!