User:Melissa Newman/Student citizendium proposal

Student Citizendium:

Target audience: 11 yr olds – 18 yr olds

Content level:

If an image would be restricted if it was presented in a movie or a magazine, then the image does not belong in the student version. The standards that we are using are the generally accepted society standards of English speaking countries. Saudi Arabia’s main language is Arabic. The student edition in Arabic will follow the society standards for the average of countries that speak Arabic as their main language, but we will not apply Suadi Arabia’s society standards to the English version. This will mean that different languages will have different standards.

Reading level:

The reading level for the main namespace is Academic to Scientific. That is 11th grade reading level to college reading level.

The student edition’s reading level should be between Digest and Quality. A digest has a reading level of 7th or 8th grade. Reader’s Digest and TV Guide fall into that category. Quality reading level is 9th or 10th grade. USA Today and New York Times fall into this category. If the topic justifies it, the reading level can go as high as 12th grade which is the Los Angeles Time and the London Times. Only topics which are generally taught in 11th or 12th grade or higher should fall into that category. An example of this is Chemistry, Physics, and Calculus. Articles that correspond to AP level classes should be labeled as such. For example, Student:AP Biology could have a reading level of up to 12th grade, but Student:Biology should be at a lower reading level.

If an article is generally taught in lower grades, a 7th or 8th grade reading level should be aimed for. An example of this would be the lifecycle of a butterfly which is generally taught in lower elementary and reviewed in upper elementary. By high school one is generally expected to have already learned the material.

John Grisham writes at a 7th grade reading level.

Mark Twain wrote at a 5th grade reading level for his books and a 7th grade level for his essays.

Student contributions:

The way to encourage student contributions would be to have an article writing contest once a month. For example, the first one could be “Write an article about a lifecycle. You can choose from one of the following: butterfly, tadpole, chicken, human baby, plant, or food cycle. A well written article will have images (diagrams, photos, or video) and text. References needed to be cited as well as recommended lists for reading and viewing to learn more about the topic.”

The winner of the contest (one for each article) gets the title of “Citizendium Student Editor”. They also get a blurb about them on the article’s talk page or maybe a sub-page “About the author”.

Needs of students under 11 yrs old :

Students generally begin research during from age 8 to 11. This group is going to be looking for images and video to include in their reports. They will needs recommendations of books that are appropriate for the topic at a reading level they can understand. They will need vocabulary and definitions, because they will be just learning the terminology related to the article. A lot of this information will be stored in the auxiliary sub-pages.

Most children’s encyclopedias for this age group are written in story book format. Instead of saying “The mouse eats the seed. The hawk eats the mouse. The hunter kills the hawk. The hawk decomposes and to give food to the plant. The plant makes the seeds. And the cycle continues.” A child’s version will say, “Billy was walking in the woods with his father. As they were walking down the path, he spotted something on the side of the path. It was a dead hawk. He started to wonder about the hawk and the lifecycle of the hawk”. This could be accomplished through a sub-page called “Story” or “Read Aloud”. The rest of the material will be the same as the student version.

Should student pages be sub-pages of the adult version?

No, because the needs of children are too different from the needs of adults. It would be very difficult to make the two share space. The main problem is that the auxiliary information is not common between the two groups. Children and student can share the same space, because their auxiliary information in more in common.