Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classroom coordination

Translation project

User:Proteins and I are in contact with a technology company that wishes to use some software it has developed that is a kind of graphic interface for translators to increase the amount of health-related information in developing-world language Wikipedias. Since this is quite a large company, this project might eventually cover many languages, but we are thinking about starting off small at around five (eg transferring content from the English to the Swahili Wikipedia is one leading option). The real work will be in developing a community of translators and bilingual experts in each destination language, students and teachers are one possible community that could help us with this, so your expertise in co-coordinating these projects might be very useful. The company is willing to help with this as well. At our end we will need to provide a list of articles on "essential health information", internationalize these as much as possible, and polish them a bit. This proposal is still in its initial stage, but could people who would be interested in participating sign up here. Thank you Tim Vickers (talk) 17:14, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Outreach to schools to reduce vandalism

There's a discussion going on at Wikipedia_talk:Administrator_intervention_against_vandalism#Outreach to school network administrators that may interest some editors here. We're looking for more proactive ways of dealing with school IP editors than the present vandalise/warn/repeat-until-schoolblock cycle that clearly is not working very well. Please give it a read.LeadSongDog come howl 21:11, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Public Policy Initiative courses for Fall 2010: Help Wanted

Wikimedia's Public Policy Initiative has recruited (tentatively) 6 professors for Fall 2010 to do major Wikipedia assignments in their public policy courses. We're working on course materials and model assignments now that will try to take a lot of what seems to have been effective with earlier courses listed on this page, and transform that into assignments that a professor doesn't have to be a serious Wikipedian to run effectively. We're also looking for Wikipedians who want to help coordinate the student's editing over the course of the coming semester. For details, check out:

• Introducing the Public Policy Initiative - The Signpost
• WikiProject United States Public Policy - this will be the hub of activity for the courses
• Guide for teachers - (in progress, help welcome)

--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 12:05, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia Online Ambassadors program now accepting applications

Related to the above, I want to invite editors interested in Wikipedia in the classroom to apply for the Wikipedia Online Ambassadors program. It's a program for helping new users through their early edits, and will focus on students who are assigned to edit Wikipedia in their courses; it's part of the Public Policy Initiative, and will hopefully be the basis for a longer-term effort at improving the way we nurture newbies.--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 18:29, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Concerns about these projects

My experience with the School and university projects, at least the ones in Wiki-chemistry and related areas, have revealed some weaknesses in this program. My main concern is that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, first and foremost, Wikipedia simply does not exist as a "scratch-pad" for students, who are required to write essays by their instructors. One consequence of student work is that regular editors are often stuck with the janitorial work. Janitorial work = reformatting, redoing artwork, and often correcting technical mistakes in content, finding better references. A persistent and unsolved problem is that students lack perspective. Consequently, they tend to cite primary sources, which are often newsy and usually US-oriented. If more involved, instructors could insist on general sources and help the students pursue this policy (per WP:SECONDARY). Often, instructors seem to rank quality of these articles based on the number of references, not the depth of the explanations. I understand the basic laudable drivers for School-and-university-projects: nurture new editors and create new content. The former is not happening at least in Chemistry project, and the articles that are created are often, as I said above, mediocre in content and often, in a search for new topics not currently covered by Wikipedia, hyperspecialized. --Smokefoot (talk) 17:30, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

The most frustrating thing of all is when long-time editors (e.g. WP:CHEM) raise such concerns with the instructor in charge (e.g. University of Maryland, University of Michigan), the instructor will often become very defensive or combative. They'll say things along the lines of "Wikipedia:School and university projects gives us the right to do things however I see fit". Then they'll reject any suggestions or complaints unless they're policy. I feel that experience and the will of regular editors is (a) more important than policy and (b) instructors should be told in no uncertain terms that the guidance of relevant Wikiprojects is not to be ignored or argued with.

Basically, students and their teachers should show us regulars some respect. --Ben (talk) 09:18, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I am not familiar with such instances, seems to be an exception to the rule. If they want to do things their way, that's fine - it's their problem if they get their work mass deleted because they didn't listen to us... and if it isn't, well, then it means they were doing something right after all, doesn't it? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:56, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

First of all, students should not be required to write essays on Wikipedia. If that happens, which does rarely, it shows a failure on the part of the instructor. Janitorial work is not that much of a problem, because it is to be expected whenever a new editor contributes content. Poor references is another instructor failure, although to be fair, it something most editors, students or not, not pay any attention too anyway. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:56, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Help needed

Would someone here help User:Arria Belli, who has created Wikipedia:School and university projects/ESIT translation project - French to English (First semester 2011-12) and could doubtless use some assistance, but who knows even less than I about how to obtain help regarding a project of this nature. I believe from our email conversation she intended to obtain assistance from Wikipedia:WikiProject Classroom coordination] but created her page in the wrong place. KillerChihuahua^?!? 21:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)