Wikipedia for language learners

July 26th, 2005 | by Tim Wilson |

I was driving home from work today listening to an IT Conversations podcast of Jimmy Wales’s brief talk at O’Reilly’s Emerging Tech Conference. Wales, who is the founder of Wikipedia and now head of the Wikimedia Foundation, was describing the growth of Wikipedia and highlighting the many versions that exist in languages from around the world. At that moment it occurred to me that the non-English versions of Wikipedia could be a fantastic tool for the foreign language teachers in my school district. Wouldn’t it be cool for Spanish students to contribute to the Spanish version of Wikipedia? That sounds like an authentic learning experience to me. Why didn’t I think of this before?

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  1. One Response to “Wikipedia for language learners”

  2. By John Pederson on Jul 26, 2005 | Reply

    Incredible thought. Amazing how it was so “right there”. These technologies continue to blow my mind each day. I’m doing a presentation to a group of 45 teachers here in Duluth, MN tomorrow morning…this will stand as a great example/possibility for brining this into instruction!

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