Wikimedia for schools workshop

This is a syllabus for a training workshop for teachers, learning designers and other staff, to introduce the various ways Wikimedia resources can help them in their work. It does not assume any prior knowledge of Wikimedia.

If you are looking for information about Wikimedia UK's work with schools, see education projects.

Objectives: participants will learn the principal facts about Wikipedia and Wikimedia, the breadth of ways they can be used educationally, and shall devise an outline of an activity for their subject.

Prerequisites

• No experience of contributing to Wikimedia projects is assumed.
• Participants should have basic IT literacy; e.g. ability to use a web browser.

Activities

Goals of Wikipedia

• Divide the room in two, and separate the two groups widely, ideally in separate rooms.
• Both groups have the task of coming up with a list of short responses. These should be written legibly on sheets of paper then which are stuck to a wall/board (post-it note might be too small to be legible in this context). Each group should use a different colour paper, or colour pen, so when their answers are brought together it's apparent at a glance which group they came from.
• Each group could be split into pairs or trios, each of which uses the time to come up with three answers. Report from each group and gather similar answers together.
• For one group, the question is, "What are the distinctive skills people need for work in the 21st Century?"
  • You can introduce this by showing an image of a factory or mill: the 19th Century workplace, and asking them to focus on how the modern world differs from that image.
• For other group, the question is, "What skills do people need to write, edit and illustrate an online encyclopedia for the world?"
  • You might prompt this by bringing up a Wikipedia article on the projector, but it might work better to talk about "an online encyclopedia" in the abstract, without mentioning Wikipedia.
• Monitor the discussions and steer them away from actual subjects. If they give answers such as "sciences, arts, humanities..." emphasise that the question is about skills needed.
• Hopefully, both groups will come up with suggestions such as:

Thinking, planning, reasoning	IT Skills: word processing	Critical thinking
Information skills: interpreting, assessing	Information skills: digesting, reporting	Creative/ original thinking
Writing accessibly	Attention to detail: reviewing and improving	Research skills
Working in a global environment: collaborating with people from different cultures, time zones, languages

• The two groups reassemble in front of one board. All the sheets of paper are put along the top and bottom of the board.
• Everybody looks for - and can shout out - examples where the two groups have come up with essentially the same point. When this happens, the two suggestions are moved to the middle of the board.
• Ideas that were offered only by the "modern workplace" group move to the left-hand edge of the board. Ideas that were offered only by the "online encyclopedia" group move to the right-hand edge.
• Looking at the pattern of ideas that emerges, elicit reflections. Did the participants anticipate how much overlap there would be? Do they see Wikipedia's role as relevant to the challenges they face as teachers? Did they see that relevance before?