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"
Wikipedia is used around the world as a valuable teaching tool, and has been shown by Nature to be as reliable as Encyclopaedia Britannica. [1] These are some examples of the range of educational activities that use the projects we support:
Use in college and university courses
Wikipedia is used in many school and university courses to teach everything from technical communication and creative writing to foreign language translation and the critical examination of sources. Wikipedia article writing is also often set as an assignment to enable active learning of subject material. Some of these courses set the creation or expansion of a Wikipedia article as an annual project and others have used the translation of Wikipedia articles to further foreign language learning. Over a hundred current and past examples are listed on the Wikipedia website. [2]
Use as a resource in schools
The “Wikipedia for Schools” project is run by the English children's charity “SOS Children's Villages”. They run over 450 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. [3]
A similar project is also run by Commonwealth of Nation's WikiEducator scheme. This project promotes the development of free educational resources for e-learning and re-uses content from both Wikipedia and Wikibooks. [4]
Wikipedia as a research tool
Wikipedia is regularly used as a research tool by academics when they want to get a basic understanding of a new subject. A recent survey showed that 88% of scientists using the Public Library of Science also used Wikipedia as part of their professional work. [5] Almost half of American doctors use Wikipedia as a research tool medical information. [6] Over a hundred examples of Wikipedia usage in academic citations are listed on the Wikipedia website. [7]
Please let us know if you would like us to provide further examples of the use of these projects in education
References
- ↑ Internet encyclopaedias go head to head, Nature, 438 900-901 (15 December 2005), available online at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html
- ↑ See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SUP . More details are given at http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_interviews_team_behind_the_2,000th_featured_Wikipedia_article and http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/03/12/cummings
- ↑ See http://schools-wikipedia.org for more information
- ↑ See http://www.wikieducator.org for more information
- ↑ See http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/04/27/scholarly-community-gives-feedback-regarding-wikipedia/
- ↑ See http://www.mmm-online.com/Docs-look-to-Wikipedia-for-condition-info-Manhattan-Research/article/131038/
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:ACSO