Education/News/November 2023/Exploring Wikipedia through Wikiclubs and the Wikeys board game in Albania
Exploring Wikipedia through Wikiclubs and the Wikeys board game in Albania
The approach of sharing Wiki knowledge with schools helped involve the school community in spreading free knowledge and creating a supportive environment in the school setting.
For this school year, we started holding in-person sessions with the Jeronim de Rada 9-year elementary school in Elbasan, Albania. By joining the Wikiclub, students will edit, create, improve, and expand articles on various topics. We believe this school Wikiclub will empower the students and teachers to contribute to Wikimedia projects in the Albanian language both as a teaching and learning tool.
At our first session, Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group highlighted that Wikiclubs play an important role in building a collaborative learning setting and community within the school, and it equips students with knowledge and information in different subjects.
In addition to Wikiclubs, we introduced the Wikeys board game to one of our partners with the Arianiti Non-public school, Elbasan Albania, an entertaining way to explore knowledge on Wikipedia. We implemented this game with 7-graders from this school. While playing Wikeys, the young students learned a lot about Wikipedia articles, rules, and pillars. They also learned the rules of the game serve and alignment with editing the article, sourcing information, balancing points of view, and avoiding errors.
Since the students are at a young age, their contribution to Wikipedia articles will focus on doing minor edits and adding basic references based on what they learn in school subjects. At the moment, we are trying to expand these initiatives to other cities in Albania while having the support from Peace Corps Volunteers serving in Albania.
Here are some pictures from our meetings and sessions in different schools.
