Help:Teachers/Introduction

Even though Wikimini is not strictly made for scholar purposes, it was first designed by teachers and for teachers.

Give a purpose to learning

The result of scholar work is often doomed to fade away in the student's memories or to get lost in the pages of old notebooks. What if we brought up to date Célestin Freinet's printing press ?

Suggest sharing their knowledge to your students by participating to the collaborative writing of an online encyclopedia to wich students all over the world can contribute.

This way, students can follow a concrete and creative goal and get involved in a project that develops and boosts the learning process... and all of it while keeping their fingers clean !

Wikimini is a collaborative encyclopedia because anyone can create and edit articles. No need for an article to be perfect or finished in order to be published ! It will quickly be improved by its future readers !

How to use Wikimini at school ?

Task your students with creating a new article about a theme studied in class, or suggest they improve existing articles. Adding a comma, a word, a sentence, or a paragraph in an article is a way of participating too !

Every single one of Wikimini's articles has a history that allows you to watch its creation and evolution, and what was written in it at every moment of its existence.

Determine if the redaction of an article is done in small groups, or if each student is responsible for their own article.


In the computer room, we write articles about roman emperors and senators in groups of two. When we're finished, we can write or edit any article that we want.	On the old Mac computer in the back of the classroom, we all take turns when we have some free time to complete the article about globalization we started last month.	As an alternative to the usual presentations, our teacher allows us to write an article about a volcano of our choice ; as long as it doesn't yet exists in Wikimini, or is very short.

There are really a thousand ways of making your students participate to Wikimini !

When to use Wikimini at school ?

If you are planning a long-term contribution, your students can begin by writing a first draft of the article, and then complete it throughout the program's advancement. You can also only create the article when it has been entirely written, like a simple synthesis work or an evaluation.

Ii is also possible to suggest to your students to occasionally contribute to Wikimini in a less formal environment, for example in the context of a working group in wich students can spontaneously work when they have some free time.

On the personal pages of Wikimini's users, a link allows you to see all their contributions. You can then make sure of what your students are doing on Wikimini at any given moment.

Where to use Wikimini in school ?

Wikimini can be used in class as well as at home.

If you don't want to integrate Wikimini into your program, simply talk about it to your students ! They can then try it out by themselves and tell you what they thought of it !

Why use Wikimini in school?

Wikimini allows a clever and innovative use of the Internet with your students (more than a simple search for informations !)

You can integrate it in your program however you want and use it in any school subject or as a simple writing exercise.

Writing or editing an article in Wikimini is even easier than writing an e-mail ! Wikimini doesn't require any software in particular and is easy to use.

Suggest contributing to the encyclopedia to your students :

Wikimini is an innovative and motivating project for your class ;
it develops self-learning for the students ;
it can be a link between school and home ;
il promotes critical thinking ;
il encourages cooperation ;
it is easy to use ;
it is ad-free ;
it is free.

What else :

Wikimini gives a purpose to what students learn by putting their knowledge to use ;
knowlege acquired outside of school is promoted as much as knowledge acquired in school ;
covering every domain, it gives every personality an occasion to contribute, whatever their centers of interest are ;
it stimulates the student's writing, allowing them to practice synthesizing, structuring and rephrasing ideas to communicate them in writing ;
it offers a lot of different articles to read about any domain of knowledge, written in an english appropriate for their age ;
it practices the student's critical thinking to analyse the other Wikiminiauts' contibutions, to edit or improve them ;
it puts the learn in a community based on cooperation, mutual respect and the acceptance of criticism ;
it encourages the writer to improve their knowledge, to question themselves, and to search for informations ;
il allows to learn actively, while having fun.