Education/News/October 2022/Adopting Wikipedia for Secondary School Students in Nigeria Classroom
Adopting Wikipedia for Secondary School Students in Nigeria Classroom
Summary: Technology will never replace great teachers, but in the hands of great teachers, it’s transformational...George Couros
As part of the Wikimedia Education team activities to celebrate the Global Media and Information Literacy Week, and the RWC Kwara, Nigeria's next steps for certified Teachers of the first implementation of the program held in July 2022, we launched the Reading Wikipedia in Classroom for Secondary School Students with support, approval, and recommendation from the Wikimedia Foundation, our institutional partner (Wikimedia Nigeria User Group), the Ministry of Education and Human Capital Development Kwara State, UNESCO Nigeria, the Principals, and certified Teachers to ensure the success of this first phase.
- Photos taken at the first physical training sessions in the 3 selected schools
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Research has shown that most of the Edtech partners in Nigeria secondary schools focused only on developing alternative learning models for the new normal. This project is to help spread awareness; regarding misinformation, disinformation, and fake news on the internet; low media and Information literacy rates among secondary school students in Kwara state, and the misconception of Wikipedia among secondary school students.
This is the first of its kind in Nigeria and a follow-up implementation program for certified Teachers who were carefully selected based on certification, Location of School within Kwara, availability of Computer laboratory and its functionality, availability of power supply and its alternatives, as well as the suitability of dedicated period for the training. The program selected 3 schools in Kwara with more than 45 students pilot the first phase, which includes:
- Government Secondary School Ilorin,Nigeria-RWC Certified Teachers; Mr. Kamal-deen Olayinka & Mr. Adekeye Tobi
- Faith Academy Ilorin, Nigeria-RWC Certified Teacher; Mr. Fatola Micheal Kayode
- Government High School Adeta, Nigeria-RWC Certified Teacher; Mr. Hassan Abdulrafiu
FOCUS
The Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom for Secondary School Kwara, Nigeria is all about enlightening and training students on the best ways to access, retrieve, evaluate, and monitor information online, as well as increase their participation in promoting verifiable and reliable information online. Its potential is to improve the student's research skills, such as the ability to make sense of information, verify, evaluate, and shift reliable information from information chaos, and use the information to create new knowledge to assist their classroom activities and schoolwork.
GOALSGOALS
- Create awareness among 45 secondary school students, from 3 different schools, on the practical usage of Wikipedia as a learning tool for retrieving, creating, and evaluating information before October 30th, 2022.
- The 45 students in Kwara, enrolled in this program, will be able to understand, access, retrieve, and evaluate information on Wikipedia and its sister projects by October 2022.
- Enable certified Teachers of the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program in Kwara to implement the lesson learned in their classroom activities.
- Enable students to learn new things outside of their regular school curriculum.
- Establish EduWiki Secondary School club in Kwara State.
ACTIVITIES
- Educating: This is aimed at educating the student on the various uses of the Wikimedia project and changing their perception of Wikipedia and other sister projects.
- Offline Onboarding Session/ Creation of Awareness: This is a one-on-one onboarding session for the participants. The Avenue will also be used to sensitize the community to the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation.
- Offline Training Session and edit-a-thon: This is hands-on keyboard training where the new editors will be given the avenue to practice what they have learned. After the training, there will be a three weeks Edit-a-thon where winners will be awarded a certificate of excellence each.
NEXT STEPS
In the coming week, we shall be holding our 4th training and issuance of certificates to participating students who are already accessing, evaluating, monitoring, and improving the information on Wikipedia relating to their school curriculum and topics of interest.