Portal for Learning- A discussion paper edit
It is widely agreed that WP is poor in attracting younger editors- and servicing the need of users in primary and secondary education. Looked at another way WP is a very large dataset and we do not have the tools to allow many users to find the data they need. Large digital datasets are increasingly available- and we need to focus our attention from being the worlds largest depository of data to being the worlds most efficient portal to that data. We have to focus on listening to what our users want us to provide- so they can process the data to fit their needs. We talk about young people in a totally amateur way- the professionals are the teachers, the parents and the youngster. A wikipedia article is already 'plagiarised by students of all ages' for coursework, it is already the first port of call for teacher preparing a new topic and for parents trying to support their child. We have five million articles that may be useful but which are they? Where are they? How relevant are they? How well written are they- is there another article that may all be suitable? This is the language of tagging- so does our tagging system actually serve the child, the parent or the teacher. Should we look to a wikiproject, or should we look to wikidata?
London Grid for Learning edit
A lot of work has been done by London Grid for Learning, led by a group of Former ILEA advisors and Directors of Education, they have put together a partnership of schools that buy into their service. They have a list of resources that are suitable across the Key Stages for each subject area and we are mentioned.
They have assessed multiple print and digital resources for availability and suitability, and produced their own commercial material- a lot is published so we could use that to inform us while building our own initial to do list, or we could approach them to see if they are willing to form a loose partnership agreement. See:Resource grid
An example could be their London Grid for Learning BalletBoyz KS3 project. BalletBoyz is known to us- but are we known to them? Are any of the Teachers, parents and kids involved in the Harris Academies KS3 project going to use our stub- or be persuaded to improve it? London Grid for Learning BalletBoyz is also used in KS2 KS4.
A co-operative project proposal edit
It is proposed that each of the 5 million articles should be tagged when they have any value in a school curriculum course. Using the existing wikipedia category structure. partners and stakeholder would be able locate, then evalute relevant materials. With wikidata and simple shell scripts, the material would be available for automatic processing. If we take the UK as an example- then work outwards to include the rest of the world certain topics will occur in many adopted curricula, so the tagging system must be flexible and extendable. I propose a container template -{{Gridforlearning}} that contains a list of {{Course-suitability}}. This becomes easier if we set up a Project.
Course-suitability edit
It is proposed that any user may add a {{Course-suitability}} tag. The information fields to be included are a discussion stage.
{{Course-suitability|body= |age= |curr-title= |audience= |importance= |class= |relevance= |edit-date= |assessor= |comment= |sighted= }}
The named fields would all be free text, but we could test on the following to establish an extensive category tree.
Body UK NC / UK Edexel/UK WJEB/ UK AEB [a]. Age range KS1/ KS2/ KS3/ KS4/ KS5/ A/ EU-BAC/ UG/ PG/ [b] Title Audience Teacher/ LSA/ Parent/ Student Importance as in any Project Assessment class Quality as in any Project Assessment Relevance to the course- Vital/Core topic/Low/background reading edit-date Date of assessment Assessor Standard 4 tildes Comment Free text
This will render as:
| Body | Age range | Title | Audience | Importance | Quality | Relevance | year | Assessor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK National curriculum | Key Stage 3 | Dance | Student | Low | Stub | Low | 2016 | User:JohnDoe |
| Limited application | See:The Royal Ballet | √ sighted:JDW [c] | ||||||
There are obviously other possibilities here such as a See Also:, which could give transwiki links, such as :simple:article . I would also like to put in a readability index, and an indication whether the lead alone might be suitable.
I envisage that once we have established the correct partnerships, they will encourage staff teaching the course to add the {{Course-suitability}} tags to articles they used in the field. [d] [e]
Wikidata Proposal edit
As yet none has been formulated. A statement on each topic, Learning Potential= may be a way to express the classifications above.
Partners edit
It is often said that we don't work with schools because they are too difficult to access, and it is true that schools are too busy fulfilling their statutory duties, and they are not going to welcome a volunteer with yet another time consuming proposal. The approach that we need to take is to talk to the teacher professional organisations: NAHT, ACL, NAS/UWT or existing organisation that already serve the teaching community. London Grid for Learning seems to have the correct track record. Exam boards for KS4 and A1/A2.
What is out proposal? Our proposal is to listen to what the professionals say, and to facilitate their suggestions. This is facilitates the request for easier access.
Comments to talk page please edit
Comments to talk page please. User talk:ClemRutter/proposal
Wikimedia UK Education Summit 20 February 2017 edit
Footnotes edit
- ^ UK NC / UK Edexel/UK WJEB/ UK AEB These bodies are quoted as examples, but any body could add material here. A text match will be done on each code when the category tree is generated- the top level category must created manually, all nodes would refer to the parent so could be autogenerated
- ^ See above
- ^ This could be a staff member from the body named, so they could police any changes they felt were malicious
- ^ We have examples of talented fourteen year olds making excellent editors.
- ^ The Talk:The Royal Ballet gives a good example of embedded templates of the sort we need.