Talk:Activities/Schools project

Schools project

Outline

The idea of the Schools project is to get WMUK / Community representatives into schools (primary & secondary) and give a course of instruction to staff and/or pupils on the correct way of using Wikimedia projects in their school work, along with showing staff and/or pupils how to effectively and constructively contribute to the various projects.

Benefits

This will benefit the projects as we may be able to, as an example, get a journalism club in a secondary school writing for Wikinews, or primary school children contributing to the Simple English Wiktionary / Wikipedia. Photo projects could contribute to the Commons, and we could instruct on how to use the Commons to find appropriate pictures for school work. Sources such as Wikipedia and Wikiquote could become well used in school projects, without the stigma associated with Wikipedia usage in schools.

Financial requirements

• Travel costs for travelling to remote sites
• Equipment costs (A laptop will probably be required - Wikimedia UK Branded?)

There is, of course, the possibility of inviting people to a conference centre and holding a larger conference, instead of visiting individual schools.

This exists in my locality, for instance, where the school I am employed by has a large conference suite and ICT suite, capable of holding and catering for 75 delegates at a time (one PC each). --Skenmy 19:17, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Volunteering

• Skenmy
• Ironholds; not involved in schools at the moment, but happy to volunteer and I've been vetted to work with children.

Do you work in or near a school and think you can help? List your name and your ideas for the project!

Discussion

We need to make sure we fully consider the controls required for working with children including whether this turns the chapter into a "childrens charity". AndrewRT 19:17, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

At no time would we be responsible for any children, so I don't think there is much to worry about. Some CRB checks might be a nice touch, but even they wouldn't be essential. --Tango 22:03, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 (which is not currently in force) will significantly extend the groups of people who need to be checked. When we start doing this the Board will need to look into it with great care. The Act requires all those carrying out a "regulated activity relating to children" to register; Sch4 1(2) would probably catch the WfS volunteers themselves as they would likely do volunteer work in schools more than 2 days in 30 and would have an opportunity for contact with children. All trustees might then be caught by Sch4 4(1)(g) as WMUK may be defined as a "children's charity" - something so broadly defined that it captures every charity which has at least two volunteers who are regulated themselves. So, if we had ten regular projects, one of which was WfS which had two people working on it, it looks like we might be caught. AndrewRT 23:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Some parts of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 seem to have already come into force: [1][2][3].

Funding was requested for this as part of the "Kick Start" grant application to the WMF here. Mike Peel 11:51, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Definitely support this-this is how Wikimedia can grow. In schools there is a lot of untapped potential, especially for writing for Wikinews etc. Dottydotdot 18:37, 29 June 2009 (UTC)