Education/Newsletter/June 2017/Wikipedia & Education User Group

Forming the "Wikipedia & Education" User Group

Summary: Letter announcing the formation of the Wikipedia & Education User Group

Dear Wikimedia & Education community,

The time has come to form an education-focused User Group to support the needs of the global education community.

This weekend, a group of education leaders from 10 countries gathered in Yerevan, Armenia. We continued a discussion that began in Berlin at the Wikimedia Conference to strategize about the future of global educational initiatives within Wikimedia projects. We discussed our current model of supporting educational initiatives, including the limitations and challenges we have faced over the last several years.

Though we do not pretend to cover the entire spectrum of education programs, we believe our collective experience has given us insight into common needs within the education community. We believe a User Group is a natural evolution from the current structure of the Wikipedia Education Collaborative (the “Collab”). As we organize to support educational initiatives around the world, we want to be inclusive, open, and transparent within our community. User Groups have formed to help Wikimedians collaborate across languages and countries, enabling better communication and visibility globally. With time, we expect this User Group may become a Thematic Organization.

Moving forward, we believe it’s vital to elevate the narrative of education within our movement and the knowledge ecosystem. We see this group as a platform for sharing the experiences and voicing the needs of the entire global education community.

We invite all interested parties to join the User Group as members (this includes affiliates, individual program leaders, educators, students, etc), and commit to setting the stage for greater success of Wikipedia in Education. To show your support, please sign up under the "supporters" section in the proposal page on Meta.

Warm regards,

Shani Evenstein, Jami Mathewson, Vassia Atanassova & Liang-chih Shang Kuan (On behalf of the founding members).