The positions below are being filled for 2012. Long and short term positions will be considered.

We have opportunities for students of Engineering, Permaculture, International Development Studies, Architecture, Urban Planning, Communications, Computer Science, Web Design and related disciplines. Benefits include mentoring, exposure to a wide range of knowledge, and experience in an active web-based collaborative project.

If you're interested and would like to know more, please get in touch at info or by leaving a message on Lonny's talk page.

Aims

The Appropedia Intern Program has a fourfold aim:

Interns (often university or college students) help develop Appropedia according to their skill and experience.

Types of Internships

Appropedia internship programs are very flexible, so the following should not be seen as limitations.

Most internships fall into one of these categories:

  1. Research internships - These interns develop new knowledge in a specific Appropedia:CategoryTree and publish it on Appropedia (e.g. testing different types of water filters for removal of contaminants)
  2. Content internships - These interns convert content from various formats into wiki pages (using tools we've adapted over recent years). In doing so, they make valuable content far more accessible, and gain a personal exposure to the knowledge in the process.
  3. Language Internships - These interns translate high quality articles to different languages. This involves both moving English content into languages spoken in the developing world, but also porting content from other languages into the English Appropedia.
  4. Tech internships - These interns will work on technical areas of the site, creating templates, and automating functions such as porting content from other formats. Depending on the skills and experience of the intern, may include site development in MediaWiki and WordPress, working with our dev site, testing settings and extensions/plugins.
  5. Travel internships - visiting organizations and/or communities in a particular region to document their work on Appropedia.
  6. Documentation Internships - visiting organizations and/or communities in their own community, or at a particular location in their own country.
  7. Communications Internships: focus can include publicizing Appropedia, making contacts with potential contributors and users, helping to identify possible deeper partnerships, and/or promoting the use of compatible licenses.
  8. Law/IP internships (described in this blog post): Identifying content that can be used on Appropedia (in those cases where permission is unclear), and helping to improve the Public Domain Search (largely a matter of identifying which specific content hosted on US federal government sites is public domain). If you're interested in a Law/IP Internship, contact us and we'll work on establishing a suitable role.

If you're interested in exploring a specific topic area, one of the content-oriented internships (Research, Content, Travel or Documentation Internships) can be tailored to focus mainly on that area.

Structure

The time commitment is 4 hours per week, for approximately 20 weeks.

The internships are structured in 3 stages, beginning with small projects such as creating an article, and becoming progressively more complex and responsible.

See Appropedia:Internships/Stages for details of the kinds of projects performed at each stage.

Duration

Internships normally last one academic semester. They can be completed during any semester including the summer. The accelerated program finishes in half a semester by doubling the hours per week - however, most students prefer the lower intensity "standard" internship.

If you wish to extend your internship when you reach the end of the semester, or remain involved in the Appropedia community, that is warmly welcomed.

Credentials

Appropedia Internships are normally regarded as a work internship, but some programs allow for service learning credit. Ask your supervisor for details. Interns that complete their internship successfully will be provided with a certificate and documentation of their work for their schools, programs or future employers.

Application

To apply for an Appropedia Internship do the following:

  1. Create an Appropedia account
  2. Create a User Page in Appropedia detailing your interests and skills - Click here for help
  3. Send a Request for Internship review to User:Lonny by leaving a note on his Talk Page. Provide details on what type of internship you would be interested in and a link back to your userpage.

Selection

The final selection is based upon:

  • motivation
  • demonstrated interest
  • academic excellence
  • personal maturity
  • the candidate’s potential contribution to the Program; and
  • the anticipated benefits for the candidate

After being selected interns will be teamed with a supervisor (normally an Appropedia Admin.) who specializes in the particular field or skill set related to the internship. The supervisor will guide the intern in completion of the specific project.

Location

The Appropedia community is spread all over the world. Most interns work from anywhere they have an internet connection - you do not need to relocate to Appropedia headquarters in California. For those wishing to work on an Internship without regular access to the internet there are also projects to develop offline content collaboration. Oversight of your internship will be conducted virtually through regular phone, email, skype, IM and wikitext communication.

If you do happen to be near one of our centers of activity, you may be able to meet with one of our admins or directors. It's unlikely that we would have an office or facilities for you to work at, but it doesn't hurt to ask. These centers of activity include:

  • Humboldt County, California, USA
  • Los Gatos, California, USA
  • Houghton, Michigan, USA
  • Jakarta, Indonesia
  • London, UK
  • Cambridge, UK

We also have partners, including in Melbourne, Australia; Armidale, Australia. When you sign up, we'll check where you are and see if we know of anyone you should meet.

Past interns

So far we have had a number of interns, some of whom are listed at Appropedia:Past interns. These include Travel Interns and Content Interns.

Highlighted Intern

Fatima ported and and assisted in site development of content

See Fatima's Userpage and her prodigious work such as:

See also

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