Education/News/June 2020/Featured education community member of June 2020


Author: Anna (User:Anntinomy), a member of Wikimedia Ukraine



Social Media channels or hashtags: #EduWikiLeaderSeries

Summary: Starting November 2019, we are highlighting a Wikimedian who is impacting or who has been impacted by Wikimedia & Education work. For June, In this article meet Oleh Kushch from Ukraine and learn from their experience in running Wikimedia education activities in High schools.

Oleh Kushch
Oleh Kushch


This month's nomination comes from Anna (User:Anntinomy), a member of Wikimedia Ukraine, who introduces us to Oleh Kushch:

Oleh Kushch is a Wikimedian from Ukraine. He teaches foreign literature in a lyceum in Kremenchuk, a city in the Poltava region in central Ukraine. Oleh started integrating editing Wikipedia to his courses after being a participant of the wikitraining for teachers in 2016.

Now Oleh is a trainer and mentor for 9th—11th-grade students (15—17 years). In three years, his students have created nearly 750 new articles and improved a few dozen more. Starting a Wikipedia article was one of the tasks for the literature course.

Oleh has also been encouraging his colleagues to do the same. He raises awareness about the Wikipedia Education Program and its practical implementation among his colleagues in lyceum, as well as shares his experience with the wider teacher’s community. For example, he delivered a presentation about his experience of adding Wikipedia to coursework at the Fifth International Scientific Conference “Practical Media Literacy: International Experience and Ukrainian Perspectives” in Kyiv and later published an article about it.

Oleh is an active Wikipedian. He has created more than 285 articles and made more than 11,000 edits. He is also a volunteer and participant of photo contests organized by Wikimedia Ukraine. His future plans include creating a WikiClub in his city inspired by Wikimedia Armenia’s model. In March 2020 Oleh became the author of the millionth article in Ukrainian Wikipedia. He wrote about African-American singer and rights activist Odetta (article in Ukrainian), as a part of WikiGap in Ukrainian Wikipedia.

Interview with Oleh on Wikimedia Ukraine blog (in Ukrainian) https://wikimediaukraine.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/wiki-course-polit/ Interview with Oleh on Telegraf newsmedia (in Ukrainian) https://www.telegraf.in.ua/topnews/10059947-hto-tak-vkpedisti-chi-mozhna-yim-dovryati.html

Do you know of a great member of the Wikimedia education community that we should meet? Nominate them for a feature by following this! For more information contact spatnaik﹫wikimedia.org