Source: The Jerusalem Post
The Education Ministry and Wikipedia are joining forces to enable Israeli pupils to fill in missing information on the online encyclopedia’s site. Israeli Education Minister, Shai Piron, and Jan-Bart de Vreede, chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, have agreed on a collaborative program to train history, geography and science teachers to guide their students in editing and adding to Wikipedia articles. This agreement marks the first systematic collaboration between an education system and the Wikimedia movement.
In addition to this project, the Education Ministry will examine the possibility of having foreign-language students write Wikipedia entries about Israel in their mother tongues.
The ministry and Wikimedia have already cooperated on a number of experimental projects, under which teachers receive training in the “wise use” of Wikipedia and content writing, outstanding middle school students write Wikipedia entries, and elementary school pupils are trained to use the site properly. Furthermore, hundreds of entries are written by university students as part of their coursework in higher-education institutions, often instead of a final exam or project.
Read more at the Jerusalem Post.