Introducing Wikipedia to Kusaal Language Teachers

The Kusaal Education Oversight Committee (KEOC) organized a series of workshops to train teachers in its pilot schools in the Zebila, Binduri and Garu Districts in the Kusaug Traditional Area in the Upper East Region of Ghana. The workshop was to train the teachers on the appropriate methods to employ in teaching the Kusaal language in basic schools. 

The organizers of the training, seeing the relevance of Wikipedia in teaching the Kusaal language in schools, partnered with the Kusaal Wikimedia Community to factor in a Wikipedia session in each cohort of the workshops. As such, Musah Fuseini (User:Musahfm), a co-lead for the Kusaal Wikimedia Community, with support from the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group, held a Wikipedia session in each of the three workshop venues. The Zebila, Binduri and Garu sessions were held on March 14th, 19th, and 20th, 2023, respectively. 

At the Wikipedia sessions, Mr. Musah took the opportunity to introduce participants to Wikipedia and its sister projects. They were especially taken through how to create their Wikipedia user accounts and how to create articles on the Kusaal Wikipedia incubator.

The enthusiastic participants could not hide their excitement after successfully creating and making their first edits by creating their first articles on the Kusaal Wikipedia incubator. They also pledged to give their all to help get Kusaal out of incubator into fully fledged live Wikipedia, and to leverage on the Wikimedia platforms to promote the language. “I’ve always had so much passion for anything promoting the Kusaal language; the platform Wikipedia is providing us comes in handy in that regard, and it couldn’t have come at a better time,” one participant remarked.

The impact of the Wiki sessions reflected the increase in the number of pages on the Kusaal Wikipedia incubator from 19 to about 100 by the end of March. The dedication and hard work of all are evidenced on all pages on the Kusaal Wikipedia homepage. The time was however not enough to cover much since the program was not specifically a Wikipedia program. The Kusaal community hopes to have a dedicated Wikipedia workshop so as to give members detailed training to enable them edit on the Kusaal Wikipedia incubator.

In conclusion, the Wiki sessions at the workshop served as a gateway to creating awareness among teachers about Wikipedia and its sister projects and the role Wikpidia could play in digitizing the Kusaal language and making knowledge freely accessible to Kusaal speaking people.