Education/News/Publication Guidelines

EduWiki Newsletter content preparation

Why do we write newsletter posts?

We write newsletter posts to share updates and stories about Education programs that use Wikipedia and its sister projects. These posts highlight ideas, successes, challenges, and experiences, helping the community learn from one another and celebrate the achievements of Wikimedia in education worldwide.

How to write a good newsletter post

A good newsletter post can be an announcement, a status update, a short op-ed, or a mini press release. The goal is to tell a clear story that gives readers the context they need — not too short, not too long.

Write it like this

Start with a short, engaging lead (one sentence) that states the main point.
Answer the basic questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? — especially for events. Readers should understand what happened and why it mattered without needing to ask more questions.
Keep it concise: enough detail to tell the story, but not so long it reads like a blog post. If you have lots of material or lessons learned, consider writing a full blog post instead.
Use 2–4 short paragraphs (or bullet points) so it’s scannable.

Make it richer

Add 1–3 photos (with captions) and links to relevant pages (event pages, course pages, user pages).
Include a short quotation from an attendee or organiser to add voice and human interest.
End with a clear call to action (e.g., “Read the full report,” “Join the next session,” or “Share your feedback”).

Need help?

The newsletter content leaders can review your draft and offer useful feedback. Contact one of the content leaders listed here: Newsletter team.

What to include in an EduWiki news story

To keep EduWiki Newsletter stories consistent and relevant, every story must clearly connect Wikimedia and education — show how Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Wikidata, Commons, Wikibooks, etc.) are being used in teaching, learning, or educational capacity building.

Clear Wikimedia + education connection : show how a Wikimedia project (Wikipedia, Wikidata, Commons, Wikibooks, etc.) was used in a teaching or learning context.
Lead sentence answering the main point: who, what, when, where, why.
Concrete outcomes or impact: student work, resources created, skills gained, or changes in practice.
Practical details readers can reuse : methods, tools, lesson steps, links to course or event pages.
One short quote from an attendee, teacher, or organiser.
1–3 photos (with captions) or media files and links to relevant wiki pages.
A brief, clear call to action (e.g., “Join the next session,” “Read the full report,” “Reuse these resources”).
Concise length (story form, not a multi-page blog): enough context to tell the story, not an exhaustive report.

Examples of suitable content for stories include

Projects, workshops, or training programs that use Wikimedia projects in classrooms or with educators. For example: Education/News/September 2025/Let's Read Wikipedia reached teachers of the Weenhayek indigenous nation in Bolivia and Education/News/September_2025/The Third Training Course of the “Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom” Program in Jordan.
Community initiatives that promote open knowledge, media, or digital literacy through Wikimedia. For example: Education/News/September_2025/Wikimedia Rwanda Wiki clubs
Reports on education-related campaigns, hackathons, or edit-a-thons that engage learners or teachers. For example: Education/News/August_2025/Brazil launches campaign about Open Science on Wiki and Education/News/August_2025/Wiki Loves Academics, WUGN Kaduna
Local, national, regional or international collaborations with schools, universities, or education ministries that advance Wikimedia Education goals. For example: Education/News/August_2025/Wikipedia vs AI at La Trobe University and Education/News/August_2025/Emerging Voices in Free Knowledge: The Journey of Wiki Club SATI
Research, reports or individual pieces that discuss Wikimedia’s role in education policy or pedagogy. For example: Education/News/August_2025/Sensing Cebu: Fieldnotes of an Academic as a Wiki Volunteer and Education/News/August 2025/Why EduWiki Should Be Considered by Policymakers

What does NOT constitute an EduWiki news story

General announcements, awards, or recognition that are not linked to Wikimedia education work.
Event summaries that lack an educational focus or do not show how Wikimedia was used.
Personal achievements or CV-style updates unrelated to Wikimedia education activities.
Administrative updates or logistics-only messages with no learning outcome (dates, meeting minutes without educational content).
Long, blog-length analyses or research papers (these can be linked to, but not pasted as the newsletter story itself).

Stories that do not have a clear connection to Wikimedia Education programs or activities submitted will not be published.

Quick checklist before submitting

Does the story show how Wikimedia was used in learning or teaching?
Will an educator reading this be able to understand the outcome and try it themselves?
Are images/links/one quote included?

If yes → good to submit. If not → revise to add the Wikimedia + education angle.

How to write the newsletter article

We have made a few changes to the previous template of the Education newsletter. We want to follow a standardised procedure for all articles, so please do not make changes to the design while submitting the articles.

All font sizes, color and font types are pre-decided in the newsletter design.
The background of the title of article is highlighted by the #00A7E2 color, which education team is following.
Add author's name in the article.
Please provide a two-three line summary of the work, which will give a glimpse to the reader about the work in News section.
Please add images just after the summary. If you have more than two images, follow the gallery template in the newsletter template. If you're adding only one image, Please keep the image on the right side of the article. Like [[File:Example|thumb|right|Example]]
Add the main article after the images.
We have introduced new tags called Social media channel or hashtags. If you have worked with any institutions and want us to tag you and the institution while sharing the articles from our social media channels, please share the username or similarly hashtags.
There are some options for categories, see if your newsletter article falls under any one of them. Please add it, which will help the reader to access newsletter related to those categories in future.

How to prepare the "In the News" section

The "In the News" section of the newsletter lists news shared about Wikipedia in education in different media publications. It can also be a place to share relevant news that could help the community better plan and implement education projects.

To find news about Wikipedia in education, Google alerts can help you. To do that, please follow the following steps:

Go to google alerts website.
In the search box type a key word for the alert to track, like "Wikipedia Education Program", "Wikipedia in Education", "Wikipedia student", "Wikipedia school", "Wikimedia Education", "Wikipedia university", etc. You can create more than one alert for as many key words you want to track.
You can edit every alert to choose how often do you want to get emails from this alert, what source do you want google to use: news only, blogs only, all, etc, and many other options.
Google when send you emails whenever there is something published on the web about the key words you logged.
Open the articles google found and sent to you, make sure each one of them is mainly talking about Wikipedia in Education and dismiss articles that don't meet this criteria.
Go to the newsroom and add a link to the article you found to the "In the News" Submissions.
You can add a very short summary about the article you are adding. One or two lines will be great.

Newsletter publication workflow

How to Publish, “This Month in Education” :

Gather the articles
Copy edit the articles
Put together the publication
Post the Newsletter
Distribute the Newsletter

Deadlines

Request articles from the community: 10^th of the month
Last date for community to submit: 26^th of the month
Publication: 28^th of the month

Education newsletter template

We updated the design of the Education newsletter in November 2018, the team has made this newsletter template more reader friendly and to be easily readable through different devices. We are using three different colors to highlight the headlines of the Education letter, and has less links or texts to avoid the previous complex designs. Readers could select their area of interest by going through the summary provided.

How to design the Newsletter article

Follow the colors of the design.
Articles should be represented in two columns, headlines in F4AC45, 92BFB1 followed by CA054D.
Even number of articles to be equally distributed in two columns.
Odd number of articles, the extra articles will be in the first column.

This Month in Education

Volume x • Issue xx • Month Year

Contents • Single page view • Subscribe

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