Education/News/September 2022/Wikipedia, Education, and the Crisis of Information
Wikipedia, Education, and the Crisis of Information
Wikipedia and education in the time of the “Crisis of Information”
On Friday 16 September 2022, Amanda Lawrence and Pru Mitchell from Wikimedia Australia joined educators and academics at the University of Canberra to discuss Wikipedia and education in the time of the “Crisis of Information”.
Organised by Associate Professor of Communication, Mathieu O'Neil, the premise of the symposium was that, while Wikipedia had become more trusted in recent years through positive news coverage, not all educational institutions have embraced it as some hold outdated understandings around how Wikipedia content is created or managed. To address this, participants shared their experiences and discussed what role educational institutions can play in Wikipedia’s potential in a period where information is increasingly volatile or fragmented.
Six Fact-Checking Lessons for Kids
LiAnna Davis, Deputy Director, Wiki Education gave the opening keynote of the symposium and launched Six Fact-Checking Lessons for Kids, a book compiling educational resources developed as part of the Co-Developing a New Approach to Media Literacy in the Attention Economy collaborative project between the University of Canberra and school teachers in the Australian Capital Territory.
Chapter two of the book asks "Is Wikipedia reliable?" and elsewhere discusses disagreements, bullying, and misinformation in ways to help build discussions between children aged 9–11, teachers, and parents.
Six Fact-Checking Lessons for Kids has been licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License, and is available to download here.
Presentations & Discussion
Sessions were held discussing Wikipedia and information literacy in schools, using Wikipedia in teaching, Wikipedia’s content gaps, the need for credible citations, and a guide to getting structured data from Wikidata. The final session was a discussion including many of the days' speakers, with members of the audience also contributing on Zoom.
Presenters and participants included:
- Mathieu O’Neil (NMRC, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra)
- LiAnna Davis (Deputy Director, Wiki Education)
- Thomas Shafee (Swinburne University – Editor, WikiJournal of Science)
- Rachel Cunneen (Faculty of Education, University of Canberra)
- Toby Hudson (Faculty of Science, University of Sydney)
- Amanda Lawrence (ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S), RMIT University)
- Pru Mitchell (Wikimedia Australia)
- James Neill (Faculty of Health, University of Canberra)
For a full list of presentations, including summaries with further information on each presenter, see the University of Canberra's event page here.
About Wikimedia Australia
Wikimedia Australia was formed in 2008 and is the Australian chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation. We support our members, the broader community, and partner organisations to contribute to Wikipedia, Wikidata, and other Wikimedia platforms through events, training, and partnerships. Our partners include University of Sydney whose students have contributed to Wikipedia as part of their Writing for the Digital World studies since 2018.
Wikimedia Australia would like to thank the University of Canberra and all of the presenters who took part in the Crisis of Information symposium. We look forward to furthering discussions around Wikimedia's role in education and information literacy taking place in the future.
Further Reading
- University of Canberra event page with works cited and further links
- Six fact-checking lessons for kids book information, with PDF download
- Can Wikipedia help in the global fight against misinformation? - Mathieu O’Neil speaks to ABC Radio Perth
- Evidence suggests Wikipedia is accurate and reliable. When are we going to start taking it seriously? - Mathieu O’Neil speaks to The Age newspaper