Guys As a Board member I personally believe we should be attempting to promote our Schools Project here and that should sit at the heart of any release. Feel free to wrap any or all your very valid points below inside and around the idea/goal of the project, should you agree with me.
To refresh: the Board has been looking for opportunities to 'work with teachers' or 'trainers' or 'academics' to help them see the advantages of Wikipedia in terms of use with students. This could be in terms of collaborative research projects that can put these skills into practice. In could be in terms of helping teachers or trainers build additional skills in the groups they train. The bigger objective is to lead to new volunteers for Wikpedia and new content. This is the real 'prize' here. I am working on something along these lines in Bristol with the Bristol Old Vic Theatre ready to work closely with schools and colleges in the area and probably up for handing over lots of content (when copyright free licences can be sorted out correctly). I am also working on trying to get into some local schools to get the Schools project outlined above rolling - I have one school very interested and hope to have a date for a session in the not too distant future. So my point is... don't bury this message in this more peripheral point - link it back to what I describe below. There is more substance to a press statement if we are not only making a statement about something but ALSO trying to actively do something about it as well. We must not simply sound off on issues 'as and when' they pop up as we would not have people listening to us when it really counts and we need the press to publish it. Happy to help 'team up' with anyone and everyone in drafting anything - just mail me Best to al Steve -------------------------------------------------- From: "Douglas Gardner" <microchi...@btinternet.com> Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 12:09 PM To: <charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com>; <wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] "Schoolchildren told to avoidWikipedia" -Telegraph> Perhaps a quick note about Special:Cite? > > ...said... ==> ...stated..? > > -----Original Message----- > > Michael Peel wrote: >> Having said that, I've just looked at the original document: >> >> http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/files/2009-12-24-plagiarism-students.pdf >> >> It actually does a pretty good job at giving advice on how to use >> Wikipedia. It's just the Telegraph that chose the choice quote and >> ignored the advice. ;-) >> >> It even mentions the School's Wikipedia. >> > OK, I'm trying now to draft a press release by shoehorning it into the > "six sentence" format. This seems to work well enough as a way of seeing > what the "story" is. > > Draft: > > School students spend an increasing proportion of their free time > online, and will not be deterred from spending study time on the Web > also. Now Ofqual, the UK's official examination regulation body, has > endorsed a guide "Using Sources" that is designed to help students using > the Web avoid the hazards, such as plagiarism and unreliable > information, by making proper use of sites such as Wikipedia, which > produces schools-wikipedia.org and DVD selections especially for this > educational sector. > > Wikimedia UK, the national organization representing the Wikipedia > reference site and other online resources, has responded by producing a > concise online document aimed at secondary school teachers. Mike Peel, > chair of WMUK, said "For all the adverse media comment and robust > debate, it is really important that students using Wikipedia understand > the correct way to work with this resource, and teachers can help them > to a more informed and critical way of using a site that they will all > know about and read anyway." > > The new guide is based on understanding how to look over a Wikipedia > page, examine warning notices and references, and follow up clues in the > history and discussion of a particular article. It is free content, > released under the GFDL license used for Wikipedia. > > /draft > > This isn't perfect, clearly. But is this on-message? Would this be what > WMUK wanted to say at this time? (NB that Ofqual did not write the guide > itself, but endorses what plagiarismadvice.org wrote.) > > Charles > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia UK mailing list > wikimediau...@wikimedia.org > http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l > WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia UK mailing list > wikimediau...@wikimedia.org > http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l > WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
