Grants:IdeaLab/Educational Content Curation Tool

Idealab

Educational Content Curation Tool

Enhance the Wikipedia Book Creator software to make a tool for teachers to curate collections of Wikimedia content for their students.

idea creator• Tom Worthington

this project needs...

volunteer

developer

advisor

community organizer

researcher

created on06:49, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Project idea

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

What problem are you trying to solve by doing this project? This problem should be small enough that you expect it to be completely or mostly resolved by the end of this project. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.
Educators are reluctant to use Wikipedia content due to the variable quality and potential for changes. Also that content needs to be available within learning management systems in a format suitable for the mobile devices students use.

What is your solution?

For the problem you identified in the previous section, briefly describe your how you would like to address this problem. We recognize that there are many ways to solve a problem. We’d like to understand why you chose this particular solution, and why you think it is worth pursuing. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.
The Book Creator software provides a partial solution, allowing a teacher to select Wikipedia content to include in a "book" for students. The teacher selects which content the student gets and what version of that content. However, the Book creator only produces PDF in one of two large pages sizes. It needs to produce smaller format PDF pages and also HTML based formats, as used by learning management system software and suitable for mobile devices.

Project goals

What are your goals for this project? Your goals should describe the top two or three benefits that will come out of your project. These should be benefits to the Wikimedia projects or Wikimedia communities. They should not be benefits to you individually. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.
Add more page sizes to the Book creator (at least A5, A6 and 6x9 inches) and the option of one column of text. Add Epub option. Add web page option (just the page content rendered as web pages). Add function to alert the curator when a significant change is made to the curated pages.

Who will you be doing outreach with?

Australian National University

Get Involved

About the idea creator

A computer programmer by background and more recently educator. I have created several Wikipedia entries and one book. May area of interest is in delivering on-line courses to students around the world as efficiently as possible. I used the Wikipedia Book Creator to make a book. Such a book is useful as it is curated by the teacher, overcoming the institution resistance to Wikipedia. But I found the Book software is limited to generating PDF in two page sizes. I would like learning software compatible and mobile friendly formats.

Expand your idea

Would a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation help make your idea happen? You can expand this idea into a grant proposal.

Expand into a Rapid Grant

Expand into a Project Grant

No funding needed?

Does your idea not require funding, but you're not sure about what to do next? Not sure how to start a proposal on your local project that needs consensus? Contact Chris Schilling on-wiki at I JethroBT (WMF) (talk · contribs) or via e-mail at cschillingwikimedia.org for help!