Wikipedia primary school, presentation at Wikimania Hong Kong, 10/08/2013. Iolanda Pensa, Luca Martinelli, Isla Haddow-Flood.

1. Wikipedia Primary School: Providing on Wikipedia the information necessary to complete the cycle of
primary education in the languages used by the different education systems
Iolanda Pensa - Isla Haddow-Flood, - Luca Martinelli, Hong Kong 09/08/2013
Children at school in the Eastern Cape, 2013. photo: Sydelle Willow Smith courtesy of Equal Education

2. Children at school in the Eastern Cape, 2013. photo: Sydelle Willow Smith courtesy of Equal Education
Why?

5. Kiwix,Wikipedia offline.

6. http://education.wikia.com/wiki/Education:Main_Page.

7. Framasoft et Wikimedia France proposent en 2012 une clé USB contenant l'encyclopédie libre Wikipédia accompagnée de plusieurs dizaines de logiciels libres.

10. © Tsesler &Voichenko,Welcome, Minsk, Road sign.

11. © Chacho Pueble, his great-aunt and photos by his sister Lula, http://www.behance.net/gallery/Grandmother-Tips/2392946.

12. Why
1.Wikipedia is an educational tool
2.Available (mobile, offline...)
3. Making sure we are providing (good) content related to education
4. Improving underrepresented content
5. Supporting the Wikimedia projects and their (potential) communities in
different languages and in different places
6.Thinking about who we are “educating” and what we are teaching

13. Children at school in the Eastern Cape, 2013. photo: Sydelle Willow Smith courtesy of Equal Education
How?

14. Wikipedia Primary School
Providing on Wikipedia the information necessary
to complete the cycle of primary education in the
languages used by the different education systems

15. WikiAfrica Primary School Feasibility Study - Wikipedia (languages used in Africa), Primary school system in South Africa, Cameroon and Italy, 2012.

16. What we did
1. Languages used in primary education in Africa
2.Those languages on Wikipedia (status)
3. Case study about primary education in Italy
4. Case study about primary education in South Africa
5. Case study about primary education in Cameroon
6.What is going on in the field (projects, wikiprojects, OER...)
7. Content we could target (possible list of articles)

17. Children at school in the Eastern Cape, 2013. photo: Sydelle Willow Smith courtesy of Equa

18. //the statistics
• Total population of South Africa (2011): 51,770,560
• # children under 19 in South Africa (2011): 19,103,566 37% of the population
• Total number of children aged 5-14 (2011): 9,414,637 or 18% of the population
• Almost one in three or 29.6% is aged between 0-14 years.
• South Africa Public Primary Schools:
– 14,456 Primary Schools
– 5,992,863 Learners
– 187,520 Teachers
• Mobile penetration in South Africa (by unique subscribers) stood at 63.68%.
• Unique subscribers in 2012: 32,386,986.
• The current contract vs prepaid split on connections is 19% contract vs. 81%
prepaid.
• 8 million South Africans access the internet on their mobiles.
– 2.48 million do not have access to computers,
– 5.42 million or 90% South Africa’s internet users use their cellphones to go
online.

19. Zambian high schoolers and their mobile phones, by mLearning Africa CC-BY -SA

20. //challenges• Low levels of literacy and numeracy
• Focus on Matric (Final) exams negate concentration on building blocks of education
• Chaotic and expensive unsuccessful national dedication to outcomes-based education
• Lack of trained teachers (in 2010 the pupil/teacher ratio was 43:1)
• Over-crowded classrooms
• Educators do not work regular hours
• Poor teacher attendance and time inefficiency.
• School infrastructure challenges include:
– shortage of books and teaching materials
– Shortage of support and administrative staff
– Not all schools have access to running water, electricity or toilets
– Insufficient access for pupils to nutrition and sexual assault and violence in school is on rise;
– A significant number of children are in grades that do not reflect their age;
– Students are often not able to complete homework due to household chores being seen as
higher priority
– The impact of HIV is significant and debilitating.
• Infrastructure
- computers used as admin tools rather than teaching devices
- School access to internet intermittent or non-existent
- Security and out of school access to technology
• Teacher knowledge, resources and time constraints
• It is reasonable to presume that those problems might be consistent in other African counties

21. Children at school in the Eastern Cape, 2013. photo: Sydelle Willow Smith courtesy of Equal Education

22. //OER in South Africa• Siyavula
–In 2012 Siyavula, a Cape Town-based Open Access publisher, began
supplying the Department of Basic Education with Grade 10, 11 and 12
Maths and Science textbooks for R40 each.
• Nal’ibali
–Nal’ibali is isiXhosa for “here’s the story”, they are a national reading-
for-enjoyment campaign to designed to spark children’s potential
through storytelling and reading
• OER4Schools
–CCE-funded ‘OER4Schools’ project started in August 2009 with a pilot
phase, that was completed in May 2010.They assessed the feasibility of
providing Open Educational Resources (OER) to ICT- and Internet-
equipped primary schools in Zambia, and of supporting interactive
forms of subject pedagogy with the new resources.
• OER Africa
–OER Africa is an innovative initiative established by the South African
Institute for Distance Education (Saide) to play a leading role in driving
the development and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) across
all education sectors on the African continent.

23. Children at school in the Eastern Cape, 2013. photo: Sydelle Willow Smith courtesy of Equal Education

24. 1. Scientific committee (list of articles and monitoring).
2. Dataset about public administrations
3. OER Open Educational Resources in cc by or cc by-sa
4. New institutions contributing to OER.
5. Wikipedia Scientific Journal, aggregator of scientific peer-reviewed journals.
6. Synergy with Wikipedia/Wikimedia/OER/Education clusters (i.e.Wikikids,
Wikipedia in different languages, existing education projects, local schools...)
7. Data analysis-research (monitoring, evaluating).
What we can do

25. What we are not going to do
1.We do not break Wikipedia rules.
2.We do not work for governments and ministries of education.
3.We do not consider Wikipedia a schoolbook.
4.We do not promote Wikipedia as a stable and passive resource.
5.We do not centralize all the activities, and in any case we can’t.

26. We want to make Wikipedia a better education resource.

27. Wikipedia Primary School: Providing on Wikipedia the information necessary to complete the cycle of
primary education in the languages used by the different education systems
Iolanda Pensa - Luca Martinelli - Isla Haddow-Flood
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Primary_School
cc by-sa all, Hong Kong 09/08/2013
Mobile A2K, photo Zetalab for lettera27, Dakar, 2010, cc by-sa.