Education/Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom

Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom is the Wikimedia Foundation’s flagship teacher training program, helping both educators and students to develop vital media and information literacy skills for the 21st century.

The Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program promotes a critical engagement with Wikipedia that allows teachers to leverage its use as a pedagogical tool. Through a collaboratively-developed curriculum, teachers explore and reflect on the different features that make Wikipedia a valuable ally to their classroom practice. A set of complementing synchronous training sessions allows teachers to collaborate with experienced instructors and share their questions, learn from global experiences, and connect with like-minded peers.

Teachers who participate in the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program develop key media and information literacy skills by understanding:

How information is produced on Wikipedia
How to access and evaluate content online
How to identify biases and knowledge gaps in the information they consume
How educators can actively contribute to the development of Wikipedia

To date, hundreds of teachers have successfully completed the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program in 11 countries including Nigeria, Bolivia, and Guinea. The educational resources created are available on Wikimedia Commons for anybody interested to learn more about the program.

About the pilot

In 2020, Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom was piloted in three countries: Bolivia, Morocco, and the Philippines. The pilot initiative focused heavily on collaboration between civil society actors in the open knowledge sector, secondary school teachers, and government authorities. It was conducted in partnership with Wikimedistas de Bolivia, Wikimedia MA User Group, Philwiki Community, and the Pasay City School District. The training resources and sessions were adapted to the needs of the local context in our three pilot countries. Find out more about the results of the first training and the first cohort of teachers who earned the certificate.

Learn more about the process of creating and piloting the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom curriculum on K12 Digest.

Learn more about the impact of the pilot in our Final Program Report.

Meet our certified trainers

Through a Training of Trainers program we supported a growing network of Certified Trainers around the world to innovate and localize the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom curriculum. The Training of Trainers was developed online from 2021 to 2023, reaching educational leaders in 48 countries.