Armenian students enjoy editing Wikipedia

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Video of participants of the Wikipedia Education Program in Ayb High School, Armenia. Watch the movie with subtitles here.

Educational programs are one of the primary programs being addressed by Wikimedia Armenia. To date, they have been implemented in seven high schools and select departments at various universities. Contrary to what we see in other countries, today, the most active contributors within Armenian Wikipedia are high school students, who, to date, have created more than 2,110 articles and continue their active participation well passed their assigned courses.
The high school program started 9 months ago, when the administration of the AYB high school and Wikimedia Armenia volunteers started their partnership by conducting workshops for the AYB students. The students were encouraged to write their first articles based on the Armenian Encyclopedia published during the Soviet Regime, so their initial effort would be towards learning how to create and edit articles, rather than content creation. To help create enthusiasm, the students were divided into three teams. The teams that created the largest number of articles with high quality won a prize. The jury was composed of experienced editors from Armenian Wikipedia.

At AYB High School

During the first completion, 14 students participated. Within a month, they created 218 articles. The results were satisfactory and the students were enthusiastic.
Following the success at AYB, other high schools within Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, and two high schools from outside of Yerevan, joined the program. Experienced editors/contributors from the high schools were recruited to train other students within their schools. For example, at AYB, 21 students were trained during the second wave, and subsequently created 800 articles.

At PhysMath High School

Another educational program that grabbed the attention of the youth is the “Translators’ Corner” program. The program identifies existing articles that need improvement, and provides links to well written articles on the same topic but in other languages. Students sign up to edit the articles by updating them with translations from the identified sources. 12 students actively participated in the program, improving 132 articles and adding 520 kilobytes of information.
The Wikimedia Armenia High school program has introduced 120 active high school participants. They have contributed about 2110 articles, 5,385,184 bytes of information and have performed over 5141 edits. The video found at the top of this page was created with the participations of AYB high school students, where the students shared their experiences editing Wikipedia.
Within the universities, we are currently working with psychology and physics majors. Our next targets are biology majors. The goal is to enrich Armenian Wikipedia with scientific articles. The success registered in the Wikipedia education program, encouraged Wikimedia Armenia to initiate the Wikicamp program, at Vanadzor, one of the scenic locations in Armenia (July 6-20, August 12-26). The participants in the camp program will be within the ages of 14 -20, who have shown active participation within Wikipedia education programs. The goal of the camp is to introduce them to tools and capabilities they are currently not familiar with and to help them improve the quality of their output. Campers will also participate in day trips to various cultural and historical sights within the region. This will help them become better contributors to existing and upcoming Wikimedia programs such as Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Earth and 100 Years of Survival.
Lilit Tarkhanyan, Board Member and Education Program Leader, Wikimedia Armenia

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

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You can find the video with English subtitles via this link.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_in_Ayb_High_School.ogv

Thanks so much for sharing your great work!

Thanks for kind words and support dear Alex 🙂

I guess they are being tasked by someone with spreading their “genocide” propaganda. I find it pathetic to use a website like Wikipedia for political ambitions, but the editors seem to be happy about it. They refuse to let anyone edit and correct the “perfectly objective and accurate” articles about the genocide claims regardless of one’s sources. This is why I have refused to donate a single cent to Wikipedia until now.

There is nothing about Genocide, Ibrahim. Otherwise many people will not respond it on their twitter page – as most liked video. But if you don’t believe, it’s normal. Just you can ask someone to translate. There are a lot of people in your country, who understands Armenian.

I would like to thank these armenian students for such a nice effort thanks.

i want to be part of your programm on wekipedia

Congratulations, Lilit, on a successful and inspirational high school education program! Please keep up the wonderful work! 🙂

Thanks a lot, dear Anna, to all of you for support and kind words 🙂

i want to be a part of your program on Wikipedia .

i would like to thanks these american students for such a nice effort .

It’s the little things that count when writing English, and I feel so helpless that I cannot go in and make the tiny edits that improve the English.
In the following sentence, the word participations should be participation, to represent the collective group effort (that’s just english for you!)
“The video found at the top of this page was created with the participations of AYB high school students, where the students shared their experiences editing Wikipedia.”
I just wish people knew the common idioms and almost slang use of English. Just sign me, Wikipedia contributor.

This program is truly amazing! Congratulations on achieving such a great thing.

Nicely done! 🙂
Lilit, I have some minor edits to suggest. If you will e-mail me your address, I will e-mail my suggestions to you.

I was an entertainer and there is incorrect information and picture shown when searching my name, i.e., a movie i was in, “guapa, rica y…especial.” how do i correct this?

1. Instead of ” To date, they have been implemented in seven high schools … “, I would suggested that a real date be used. Otherwise, after 3 years the date would not be remembered.
2. Also “The high school program started 9 months ago, when… “. Again a real date would helpfull.
3. I like the dates that are: Year/Mo/Day, instead of Month/Day/Year.
I got rejected. You want a valid EMAIL address, not just a Mail address. But what is a “Website”

I am watching 🙂 Amazing work. Educating people correctly from this point on is my number one goal. You children break my heart with all your smarts that you wish to share. Do not think for a second I will forget. Our future looks bright when I see children around the world stepping up where I should be at. Thank you, for you truly understanding what I meant when I said plan to live to be 100. We must help where we can and know 🙂

We should make it easier

I`ve not had any login information to submit , I can leave email for you to attend the network survey