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WikiAfrica Schools works with schools as they teach students how to write curriculum-relevant articles for Wikipedia. Thus students learn how to do research, analyse outcomes, collaborate, write real articles for a global audience as they develop the technical and editorial skills to add content on local subjects to Wikipedia. The project uses WikiFundi, the offline editing environment that mimics the experience of editing Wikipedia, to navigate context-specific challenges.
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The WikiAfrica Schools Project is a WikiAfrica project launched in 2017.
WikiAfrica Schools helps teachers to introduce online knowledge systems to their students and teach them how they work. The programme helps students to acquire key ICT skills and teaches critical thought through the emphasis on referencing, citations and writing for neutrality. Additionally, the students benefit by being part of a global movement and learn that their knowledge is both valued and valuable.
An exhaustive study shows that including Wikipedia-based assignments in the teaching programme provides students with valuable digital and information literacy knowledge, critical research, writing for a public audience, teamwork, and technology skills. The report found that students are more motivated by these assignments as they were proud of their work, spent more time, and saw the usefulness of the result beyond a learning task.
Using the existing curriculum as a base, the WikiAfrica Schools programme provides educators and students with an opportunity to use the WikiFundi offline editing environment to contribute to Wikipedia and thus develop and strengthen their curriculum-aligned teaching. WikiFundi was developed by the principals of Wiki In Africa to counter the challenges education organisations face with regards to data costs, consistent internet access and power outages.
In its current proof-of-concept phase in South Africa, the project is training and supporting the African School of Excellence (ASE) and Global Teacher Institute’s Future Leaders as they integrate the creation of Wikipedia articles into their teaching plans. During roll-out, each iteration of the project will be developed collaboratively with individual schools to ensure its effectiveness.
The programme provides in-depth training for teachers. The WikiFundi devices are donated to each participating organisation. On each device is a host of offline education resources, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, WikiSource and Wikiquote, in addition to the WikiFundi environment that mimics the processes required to contribute to Wikipedia offline. These knowledge resources are especially critical to schools that don’t have libraries or access to them. Partnering institutions receive ongoing support – both remotely and on-Wiki – for the first three months of the integration programme.
Mid-way through the proof-of-concept in South Africa, the WikiAfrica Schools programme has been enthusiastically received by the partners, teachers and students. The integration stage is taking place in Term 3 (August - September 2017), where the outcomes will start to flow. The project is deemed to be sustainable once the processes are fully integrated into the teaching plan.
WikiAfrica Schools is a project initiated by Wiki In Africa to support the next generation of the WikiAfrica movement. The 2017 proof of concept in South Africa has been collaboratively created with lettera27 in partnership with African School of Excellence and the Global Teachers’ Institute. WikiFundi was developed by the principals of Wiki In Africa, in collaboration with Wikimedia Switzerland and supported by the Orange Foundation. Al documentation for both projects is under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
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Events will be held at various schools and with partners. So far, the actions can be divided into
a) training and engagement at African School for Excellence, and
b) presenting the project to the Wiki community and to education organisations.
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4 visits have been conducted with the African School for Excellence (South Africa). Engagement with the school includes the following:
The agenda:
The group was split into 4. They were asked: “Can you see this as being practical? In what ways ..? How can it be applied, and what crossovers are there? They supplied their ideas about how they thought that the project could be applied by the school: Suggested subjects of focus:
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Group 4
Of the 23 survey requests sent, only the 6 teachers involved in Grade 10 classes responded. This was mainly due to a feeling of responsibility and accountability as the school had decided to trial the project with the Grade 10 class - one teacher was from Grade 11 and another was part of the administration team.
Agenda and links: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/WikiAfrica_Schools The teacher training was conducted with the grade 10 teachers.
A full day workshop was held with a selection of Grade 10 students. There are 75 Grade 10 students at ASE - split among 5 classes. It was decided that we would take three students from each class who would act as trainers. As you can see in the pictures, the kids were awesome!
The agenda and links are here: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/WikiAfrica_Schools_Students
The morning session concentrated on working through the introduction to Wikipedia, to navigating WikiFundi, and introducing concepts that are associated with the Wikipedia World, including Creative Commons licencing.
The second half of the training was for the students to create the ASE article on the WikiFundi. All the kids registered on the box and decided what topics were important for the article. These topics were then divided into groups - the groups were created randomly. The kids went off and gathered the information - and then later spent time adding the text to the article on WikiFundi.
The African School for Excellence article has since been transferred to Wikipedia.
Kay Sibanda, a Grade 10 student took a whole load of photos with the school camera. Eugene Makulu arrived for the last 2 hours (there were transport problems for him from Soweto) and managed to take many amazing shots that captured the excitement of the children, how engaged and interested they were.
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The project has the following key tasks:
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m:WikiFundi is an editing platform that provides an offline editable environment that provides a similar experience to editing Wikipedia online. WikiFundi allows for training and contribution when technology, access and electricity outages fail or are not available at all. It enables individuals, groups and communities to learn how to edit Wikipedia, and to work on articles collaboratively. Once completed and connected to the internet, these articles can be uploaded to Wikipedia.
WikiFundi also has host of different resources available to help both teachers, trainers and Wikipedia volunteers to help others.
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Websites:
Social media: