Wikimedia trains older volunteers as “Wikipedia trainers”
On Monday the Wikimedia Foundation started a qualification program to train senior citizens of the 50-plus age group as “Wikipedia trainers”. The future Wikipedia trainers shall be enabled to run their own Wikipedia workshops in internet cafés for older people. The long-term goal is to raise contributions from older people, who are still underrepresented in the Wikimedia Foundation’s projects.
The course will last six weeks. During the first weeks the participants will learn the basics of how to edit Wikipedia articles. In a second phase the participants will collaboratively develop a concept for Wikipedia courses for senior citizens. Subsequently, the participants should be able to act as Wikipedia evangelists and motivate other people of their age to contribute to Wikipedia.
The qualification program is part of the Foundation’s attempt to encourage contributions from targeted underrepresented groups.
Frank Schulenburg
Public outreach coordinator
UPDATE: Frank has written up some additional information about this program here.
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This is a great idea, where can people go for more information?
This looks great — you should post some photos, text or video interviews, and whatnot.
I have done this for small group.
I agree is a great idea, and also a critical issue since “age digital divide” is a race against time for all the potential knowledge that older people can give to Wikipedia (and probably many other ICT areas). Congratulations for the initiative, please update info with links if there are specific pages created for that project.
This is GREAT! I would love more information, too. I work with people who do technology training in public libraries and think there’s a natural fit with this type of thing.
Hi all! Sorry for the delay, but it took me some time to collect the information. I’ve started a page on Meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Trainers Please feel free to ask more questions about the project and about our experiences.
We now have a page on meta that provides a bit more info on this program. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Trainers :)