While the Wikipedia Ambassador Program has worked with college-level courses, pre-college education has been the focus of the Viquiescoles project ("Wikischools") at the Catalan language Wikipedia, with the 2012 edition already underway. This is an initiative promoted by Amical Viquipèdia (an association of Catalan-speaking Wikimedians) that gathers teachers for an editing workshop that shows both the basics of using Wikipedia, and the advantages of using it in classrooms. This teachers' workshop is later complemented with a competition where the teachers' students draft Wikipedia articles on a separate wiki, qualifying for various prizes. The best articles are then transferred to Catalan Wikipedia.
Wikischools exhibits peculiarities that make it a unique project: it combines teachers from different parts of the Catalan-speaking territories (and thus encourages the exchange of views and experiences); moreover it includes elements of reflection that go beyond a simple technical workshop to make the program an opportunity to discuss issues such as shared knowledge, the role of students in class, the actual use of new technologies in education and the promotion of critical thinking, among others.
In this year's edition, 16 teachers from 15 high schools are participating in the program. Teachers from both secondary schools and vocational schools are represented.
The program began in 2010 in the Balearic Islands, and in 2011 a test phase was conducted simultaneously in several territories, with the result that around 70 articles were included on Wikipedia. This year, the organisers expect to exceed those numbers, and hope to be attentive to the evolution of the newcomers into the next generation of full Wikipedians, whose contributions you will soon be able to read in the Catalan Wikipedia.
On 3 March 2012, Mexico had its first ever edit-a-thon, held at the Museo de Arte Popular (Popular Art Museum) in the historic center of Mexico City. While numerous edit-a-thons had been held in various institutions, one important element of the success of this event was the involvement of two of Mexico’s major institutions of higher education.
Students from ITESM-Campus Ciudad de México and the newly formed student group at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa joined with Wikimedia México to create six new articles, five in Spanish and one in English: Palo fierro (ironwood carving), Carlomagno Pedro Martínez (ceramicist), Colorantes naturals (natural dyes) (a translation from the English Wikipedia), Cerámica de Mata Ortiz (Mata Ortiz ceramics), Familia Soteno (Soteno family) and (in English) Alfeñique in Mexico.
This collaboration among Wikipedia groups not only made the event a success, but also allowed for members of said groups to connect face-to-face and discuss future events with mutual support.
Discuss this story
The separate wiki for Catalan students with an experienced user promoting articles to the regular Wikipedia is a fantastic idea. Perhaps we could make this easier for individual projects, universities, edit-a-thons, or classes to set up. Alternatively, maybe one big "Try out" wikipedia could be set up. Smallbones (talk) 17:17, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]