Charity status application/Use of Wikimedia resources in structured learning
When Wikipedia was founded, the aim was explicitly focused not on creating knowledge in isolation, but in making it available to everyone throughout the world as an educational resource. The mission statement was:
“Imagine a world where the entire sum of human knowledge was available to all”
Despite Wikipedia's caricature as just a collection of useless star trek trivia, the resource is used around the world as a valuable teaching tool. These are some examples:
Use of Wikipedia in college and university courses
Wikipedia has been used in college and university courses since 2003, and has been used by approximately N projects worldwide thus far.
Prof. Jon Beasley-Murray is a creative writing lecturer at the University of British Columbia in Canada. He has recently extended his course ... Part of his course is now ....
More information: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_interviews_team_behind_the_2,000th_featured_Wikipedia_article
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_interviews_team_behind_the_2,000th_featured_Wikipedia_article
wikipedia:Wikipedia:Schools and universities project
wikipedia:Wikipedia:School and university projects/Past_projects
Wikipedia for Schools
The “Wikipedia for Schools” project is run by the English children's charity “SOS Children's Villages”. They run a large number of extended residential homes and schools for orphaned children, predominantly in the developing world. Wikipedia for Schools selects content from Wikipedia, filters it to be child-friendly, and puts it onto DVDs and as an online download. These are then sent to schools throughout the world to be used by primary and secondary school teachers in their classes.
More details about the wikipedia for schools project can be found at their website, http://schools-wikipedia.org
Wikipedia as a Research tool
Studies have shown that Wikipedia is regularly used as a research tool by under-graduates when they want to get a basic understanding of a new subject [extend and cite sources; used by professionals?; wasn't there an article about using Wikipedia to get medical advice?]
Wikispecies
Academic Citations
[can we dig out any good academic citations?? Thinking about “Read more about this at...” ]
Wikiversity and Wikibooks
[can we get any examples of these actually being used in the educational context?]
Endangered language learning/preservation
[any examples??]
Lifelong learning
Perhaps the most important component of Wikipedia's role in the modern world is its frequent use by millions of people worldwide, both in terms of reading and also writing. Wikipedia provides an easy method of finding out information about practically anything, and learning about it in as much depth as the reader wants. If Wikipedia doesn't have that content, then it encourages the user to find out the information from other sources and add it to Wikipedia.