Submissions:2014/Using Wikibooks and Wikiotics to build community-centered language courses


 * Title of the submission: Using Wikibooks and Wikiotics to build community-centered language courses


 * Themes (Proposal Themes - Community, Tech, Outreach, GLAM, Education): Education


 * Type of submission (Presentation Types - Panel, Workshop, Presentation, etc): Presentation


 * Author of the submission: Ian Sullivan


 * E-mail address: sullivan@wikiotics.org


 * Username: wikiotics


 * US state or country of origin: NY


 * Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.): Wikiotics Foundation


 * Personal homepage or blog: http://blog.wikiotics.net/


 * Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal):

What role can Wikipedia and related Wiki projects play in the creation of primary course instruction materials for the schools in our communities? Over the last year the Wikiotics Foundation (http://wikiotics.org/en/Wikiotics_Foundation), an independent NY non-profit, has been exploring that question with PS 9, a Brooklyn elementary school with a young and growing bilingual education program. As part of the public "Last Language Textbook" (http://thelastlanguagetextbook.org/) campaign to build freely licensed and reusable language instruction materials, we have worked with the school to build a WikiBook that helps English speaking parents with children in the bilingual education program learn the Spanish they need to talk with their children and with fellow parents. We believe that working with the local community to build materials for their school is a productive model for educational outreach by the Wikimedia community and an effective way to grow the pool of freely licensed educational materials, especially in the pre-college grades.

In our first year of working with PS 9 we have learned a number of ways to reach out to school administrators and the parent community that may be of use to anyone interested in launching a similar program. We are also looking to expand the number of schools making use of the materials we have already built (https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/ElementarySpanish), especially to ESL programs or bilingual education programs in any language. Half of this presentation will be devoted to questions and discussion so we can better explore how the lessons we have learned about building instruction focused wiki materials relate to the goals of other conference participants and discuss some of the ideas we have developed for combining instruction focused outreach with existing campus ambassador programs. Participants are encouraged to take a look at the WikiBook for the project and at the blog post launching our collaboration with PS 9: http://blog.wikiotics.net/2013/06/building-for-the-world/


 * Length of presentation/talk (see Presentation Types for lengths of different presentation types): 75 Minutes


 * Will you attend WikiConference USA if your submission is not accepted?: Yes


 * Slides or further information (optional):


 * Special request as to time of presentations:

Interested attendees
'''If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with four tildes. ( ~ ).'''


 * 1) Add your username here.