Education/News/Drafts/First class of teachers graduated from Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom 2024
First class of teachers graduated from Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom 2024
From Bolivia we share good news, this June, 20 teachers from La Paz concluded the training program "Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom". They are teachers from different grades of the Don Bosco Educational Unit, one of the largest in the educational district of La Paz, with more than 3 thousand students and approximately 200 teachers. The process began in March of this year, and the teachers not only learned about the Wiki environment and the other Wiki projects, but also how to contribute their knowledge to the encyclopedia.
But, most importantly, based on this, the teachers developed lesson plans, in which Wiki is the essential tool for classroom work. For example, for the second grade of primary school, where teachers work with students between 7 and 8 years old, one of the plans proposed by the teachers consists of biographical research of Bolivian poets in Wikipedia, especially Oscar Alfaro, a poet and short story writer from Tarija who gave special dedication to literature for children and adolescents. This search for information by students involves parents as tutors who accompany children to surf the Internet in a responsible and safe way, sharing the guidelines studied during module 1.
Another interesting proposal was made for the area of Physical Education and Sports, where teachers involved Wikipedia in the research on the Olympic Games; but, in addition, the proposal includes the replication in the classroom on the anatomy of an article, especially in the area of references that, for the evaluation, will be weighted. Also, the area of languages can be mentioned, where the proposals include the consultation of articles in English written about Bolivia, so that students learn new vocabulary of verbs conjugated in past simple and present perfect; as well as the teacher's evaluation includes that these articles consulted have reliable and updated references. As can be seen, the use of Wiki in the classroom can be transversal to the grades and areas of work, not only as a source of consultation, but also as a source of learning and apprehension of new elements that contribute to the formation of the students.
As a team of Wikimedistas de Bolivia we also enriched ourselves a lot in this version because every teaching process is also a learning process, by conducting interviews to the participants we evaluated the application of the program to improve it.We also understand that the application of the tool is adapted to the needs and realities of each participant in the teacher training program.The graduation of this first class of teachers coincided with the celebration of the Bolivian Teacher's Day, which in our country is commemorated on June 6. As part of the gifts they were given a 64 GB USB memory stick containing an updated version of Kiwix so that they can access Wikipedia even when they do not have an internet connection. The work with Don Bosco School was carried out thanks to the alliance with Internet Bolivia Foundation, which works on digital inclusion and the critical use of technology, from a Human Rights perspective.