Change in Modern Schooling Education with Wikipedia: Part Two

In my previous article, I (hopefully) made the readers believe that there is a need of change in the modern education that is provided in schools across the globe. If you haven't already read that yet, and landed on this blog post by mistake, please do read that first. Link for the same: Previous blog post in this series .

While writing this blog post, I promised myself to stay to the point, but if I don't or make you think out-of-the-box, forgive me already because I am going to do that. Never mind, but in this post, I will tell you exactly how Wikipedia works in school education.

Suppose, you are a teacher. You are not just any teacher, you are a teacher to whom Prince EA mentioned,

"You are a great teacher who can reach the heart of a kid and allow him to truly live."

You want to change this 150-year old education system. You want to introduce something new, something that will allow the students to showcase their skills. Congrats! You just got Wikipedia for your students. Say goodbye to pens, papers and ink and say hello to electronic media and Wikipedia. Enough of sayings, let's see some action:

1. Prepare an assignment

You may ask your students to create an article, or expand an existing article, or add media to an existing article. You can also give them assignments related to translation, copyediting etc.

2. Choosing an article

After preparing the assignment, students must choose the article they wish to work on. Look for articles that are rated as "start" or "stub" since they can be a good start to encourage the students to edit Wikipedia.

Things that should be kept in mind while choosing an article

• Always look for an article that is weakly represented in Wikipedia and can be expanded easily.
• While creating a new article, always search for its existence. Often, you may encounter that the article with same/similar name and content already exists.
• Don't edit articles which are highly controversial or rated as "High Quality" on Wikipedia. Your edit might be reverted. (Trust me, it hurts when your edit is reverted, it really does.)
• While choosing the title for your article, always keep it short and informative. Do not make it look like an essay. For example, "Effect of Inflation in the Economic condition of India", will certainly be wrong in encyclopedic point of view.

3. Teach Wiki basics to students

With good writing skills, students must have basic knowledge of Wiki markup. They must learn how to create links, references, adding edit summary, adding media, creating different level of headings etc. Along with markup, students must learn about licensing, how licensing works in Wikipedia, especially in Commons while uploading any media. Students should be encouraged to upload their own content to Commons.

Read till here? Really? Don't forget you are reading them as a teacher. Because you are the one who can initiate a change. Nevertheless, keep reading!

4. Collaboration and interaction

First rule of Wikipedia, there is no such thing as "Competition", we believe in collaboration. Students must realise that no editor competes with other. They work collaboratively. Students should learn how to interact with others as well. Every article has its own talk page where editors discuss about that article. Just like any other community, Wikipedia has its own etiquette. Here are some guidelines that might help the students to get along with fellow Wikipedians:

• Be polite, try to understand them. Discuss and negotiate.
• Always sign your posts on talk pages or wherever you comment by using (~~~~).
• Never discuss anything that is not related to article on talk pages.

5. Assessing student's work

As a teacher, you have to grade the student's article. You have to tell him/her, where he/she is wrong or where he/she wrote great. Thanks to the awesome tools such as WikiComment and Program and Events Dashboard which can help you achieve that. Go through these tools and learn how to use them.

So, this is where I put this blog post to halt. I know there are so many questions unanswered, I haven't even explained you the benefits of editing Wikipedia (which I suppose you should know by now, but as a blogger it's my duty to enlighten you with them). I will soon come up with the third and final blog post in this series.

If you found this article even a little bit interesting, I have something for you. It's a PDF by Wikipedia Education Program to help you in detail on how to get started. The link to the same: Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool.

Change in Modern Schooling Education with Wikipedia

Anyone who has used the internet must know about Wikipedia. We all have been using it since childhood. Wikipedia has helped us in our school projects, college reports, or whenever we wanted to know about any other random topic. In this article, I am not going to tell how Wikipedia can help in schooling education, because firstly I want to make the readers believe in my motto, in Wikipedia's motto, and also make them feel that there is a need for change in education that is currently bestowed in schools. We educate ourselves to gain knowledge in any field of study. So, in a simpler context, education is about imparting knowledge. If you all agree to the previous statement, then you must agree that Wikipedia has something to do with Education. Yes! Wikipedia has been into education officially for more than six years. Now, you must be thinking Wikipedia is all about writing articles, how can it help in school education? Well, I would suggest you to keep reading and keep patience. :)

NEED OF WIKIPEDIA IN SCHOOL

I just passed my 10+2. I know how much I relate myself to school education. I have experienced it for 12 years. Let me take you back to your schooling days, or if you are studying in school, that's great. In school, while writing a stupid article, or a 1-2 page long answer, the first thing that always struck my mind was, "Why the heck are they making me write this? No matter how much good I write, it will never be read by anyone except my teacher, and even the teacher is not interested." What happened 150 years ago in Education, the same procedure is still followed. While the world has evolved into the 21st century, the education still being of the 19th century. 

The school education can be described as in:

But, what if we modify it as follows:

An absolute and significant change in the pre-existing procedure, right? If you are a student or if you have suffered from the same, you will readily agree to this. I am putting this to halt. I wish to know what you think of change in modern schooling education. In the next article, I will explain in detail how Wikipedia can be used as a tool for education. Till then, brainstorm on this idea and let me know your views in comments.