Wikipedia for the classroom

I hope it's not a secret that I am a supporter of Wikipedia. This is not the first time I write about Wikipedia here (see this). I was reading Stephen Downes' OLDaily this morning and he writes about having come across a page on Wikipedia that offers guidance to teachers on how to use Wikipedia in the classroom.

The page is called Wikipedia: School and university Projects. It offers many useful learning activities that can be facilitated by Wikipedia and the aspect that I find most valuable is that it lists many current and past scholastic projects mediated by Wikipedia. Some of the participants are heavyweight schools too. (i.e. UofC Irvine, Penn State, U of Hong Kong, etc.).

There is one Canadian school on list (as of Sept 22nd, 2006), the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT). In Fall 2005, "as part of BAI530, a Leadership course in the Bachelor of Applied Information Systems Technology program, students are required to participate in group community service projects of at least 10 hours of work [...] five students opted to use those 10 hours contributing to Wikipedia."

As regular Wikipedia user, I find that type of learning activity pretty neat!

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