A pedagogical kit to use Wikipedia in class

Last updated on 12 May 2026

Let us give due thanks to the Wikimedia France association which recently published an excellent teaching kit for teachers to use the famous encyclopedia in class.

Your students know Wikipedia as much as perhaps the most famous social networks like Facebook or Instagram. The articles in the collaborative encyclopedia are a source of ‘inspiration’, not to say ‘copy and paste’, which is inexhaustible for generations of middle and high school students. How else can we use Wikipedia’s immense wealth and train young people to make ‘informed’ use of the tool?  

Wikimedia France has an interesting answer to this question: Make young people go from being readers to contributors.

The online pedagogical kit tries to give all the rules, also teachers as well as young people, to carry out educational projects around the creation of articles or files in the Wikipedia encyclopedia.

Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia in the world. Launched in 2001, it contains 29 million articles in more than 200 languages and is visited by nearly 500 million visitors each month. Figures that make you dizzy.

The educational kit takes the form of a dedicated portal. A Wiki where you will find concrete examples of teacher-led projects as well as particularly clear tutorials with step-by-steps, help booklets and discussion spaces to exchange with volunteer contributors to the encyclopedia. Clear, practical and action-oriented.

Contributing on Wikipedia makes it possible to defeat all the received ideas circulating on the online encyclopedia. Writing an article or dossier requires a serious desk search to source the information. It also makes it possible to train young people to work collaboratively in a real-life work situation. The final publication is a source of motivating and exciting satisfaction.

The people of Wikimedia France, but beyond the entire Wikipedia community are always ready to lend a hand and useful advice. This is part of the very genes of this great project. Take advantage of it.

Link: Pedagogical kit "Using Wikipedia in the classroom" — Link Wikimedia Association France