Education/Newsletter/May 2014/Single
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Wiki Camp 2014 at Vanadzor
By Lilitik22
Following the success of their Wikipedia Education Program, Wikimedia Armenia will be hosting a Wiki Camp this summer at in Armenia (July 6-20, August 12-26). Participants in the camp program will be 14 -20 years old and will have shown active participation in the Wikipedia Education Program. The goal of the camp is to introduce them to tools and capabilities they are currently not familiar with and to help them improve the quality of their output on Wikipedia. Campers will also participate in day trips to various cultural and historical sights within the region, which will help them become better contributors to existing and upcoming Wikimedia programs, such as Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Earth and 100 Years of Survival.
EduWiki Conference in Belgrade 2014
By Ivan25
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| Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Category:EduWiki Learning Day Belgrade 2014 |
On March 24, first EduWiki Conference in Serbia was held in Belgrade.
EduWiki Conference 2014 - Belgrade was the first conference organized by Wikimedia Serbia, whose aim was cooperation between Wikimedia and educational and scientific institutions, as well as mutual cooperation between Wikimedia chapters on educational projects.
This was a two-day meeting divided into two parts: the first (Learning day) was reserved for local and internal meetings, workshops and presentations between Wikimedians and participants of educational projects from Serbia and other local Wikimedia chapters; the second (Conference) consisted of lectures, presentations, and meetings with local educational and science organizations.
Learning Day was held on March 23, at the Wikimedia Serbia office. Participants were from the host chapter, WMF, WM Czech Republic, Macedonian Wikipedia community, WM Ukraine, WM United Kingdom and WM Deutschland.
The aim of this meeting consisted of workshop and discussion about the most important educational topics – metrics, project managers, community support, quality and quantity of articles and also sharing of good ideas and experiences. All together we learned what we are doing well, what we could improve, and what novelties we could introduce in our educational projects.
On March 24, the conference was held at the Belgrade Youth Center. Among the presenters were guests from abroad, including a Wikipedian from Republic of Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina), our colleagues from the chapter and also guests from local educational and scientific institutions and government representatives. All together there were around 75 participants.
The idea was to present to educational institutions what we are doing and how they can join us and start a project in their organization. Conference was divided in three parts. The first one was introduction (what is Wikimedia and Wikipedia, WMRS educational projects and projects in practice); second part was reserved for CC licenses, language dictionary project (Arabic-Serbian dictionary "1001 Arabic word") and successful stories from educational institutions; the last part was reserved for presentations of our guests from other local chapters.
Altogether, the Conference was successful and well organized. Guests from educational institutions shared their positive impressions with us and gave us support to continue our mission. In the next few months we will see what the real impact on the educational community was, and what our next steps will be.
Beside meetings and Conference day, guests from abroad had the opportunity to enjoy social activities such as boat cruise on the Belgrade's rivers, sightseeing in the city center and a glimpse of a well-known Belgrade nightlife and restaurants. Rainy weather didn't affect the last-night gathering, in spite, hosts made a heartwarming farewell party which lasted till the morning.
Find more information on the website EduWiki and also see a lot of interesting photos taken during those days.
Participation of "Servicio Social" students in Wikipedia grows at Tec de Monterrey
By Thelmadatter
During the Spring 2013 semester, Tec de Monterrey began a pilot to offer working with Wikipedia/Wikimedia as an option for earning the community service hours that undergraduate students in Mexico are legally require to complete to get their diploma. During this semester, only one student was involved and most of her efforts were in working out how this would work. The Fall 2013 semester had five participants, with only three completing hours. This past semester began with 23 participants with twelve students making very significant contributions, mostly in translation and photography (over 2000 photo), but also with the contribution of tourist maps of various Mexico City boroughs. Translation was done English-to-Spanish and resulted in creation or improvement of 62 articles, many of which are academic such as Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Music of Norway, History of Petroleum in the United States, New Zealand Native team of 1888-1889 and U.S. China Relations (the longest article by far).
These efforts, along with classroom assignments in English and communications classes help get Wikipedia accepted into the Tec Modelo 21, a system-wide effort to promote innovative projects in education. A blog post on this is forthcoming.
A full list of completed projects can be seen at the Wiki Borrego Spring 2014 page at Wiki Borregos Spring Semester 2014. Some of the more interesting images are below:
Egyptian students and professors celebrate last term's accomplishments
Students and professors put on a celebration conference at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt, to celebrate their achievements from the previous Fall 2013-2014 semester. Students were recognized for their contributions with certificates and top contributors were given Wikipedia hoodie sweatshirts as gifts. Students from Egypt contributed 7.3 million bytes of new content to the Arabic Wikipedia. The event also highlighted their efforts to close the gender gap, with 88.9% female participants in the previous term. The event was organized by Dr. Karma Sami from Ain Shams University and coordinated by program leader Samir El-Sharbaty.
Browse photos of the event on Commons.
Wikimedia Deutschland: Summary of activities in April 2014
We made some slight adjustments to the way we report our monthly activities. Instead of reporting by projects we think that it is better to report by our three Programs (volunteer support, institutional partnerships, legal and social framework) and the respective activities we conducted within them.
1. Volunteer Support
In April, the Wikimedia Deutschland office started hosting women edit meetings on a regular basis. The series of monthly events was initiated in cooperation with the womens computer centre Berlin (Frauen Computer Zentrum Berlin) and aims to assist interested women with their first, second and third steps in the online encyclopedia. Furthermore, a planning group was established in order to organize a “women in science”- edit-a-thon on 31 May in Berlin.
2. Institutional partnerships
As already mentioned Wikimedia Deutschland is officially partner of the Science Year 2014 - “Digital Society”. In this context we will conduct several activities in the upcoming months in order to raise the interest of institutions and the general public for findings, developments and practical projects within the topics of free knowledge, online collaboration and digital competencies. In cooperation with the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society and Science in Dialogue - The initiative of German Science we will host the Barcamp ‘Society 2.0’ which aims to embed the subject of free knowledge in the scientific sector. In addition we will enrich the conference “Brave new world? Digital educational resources in schools” that will be hosted by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on 30 June with our perspective on Open Educational Resources.
3. Legal and social framework
On 6 May the exhibition ship MS Wissenschaft (“MS Science”) started it’s tour through Germany and Austria under the heading „Digital unterwegs” (digitally on the move). On board: Our interactive exhibit, that connects OpenStreetMap with Wikipedia articles for different points of interest along the route of the ship. To get an idea about what the exhibit looks like and what visitors can do with it, you can check out this article on our blog (unfortunately it’s in German but you can have a look at some pictures as well as a screencast. If you have questions regarding the exhibit, please get in touch with us).
In cooperation with the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, bpb) we will host the Open Educational Resources Conference 2014 on 12 & 13 September in Berlin. The fact that we cooperate with the bpb shows that leading institutions are dealing with and are interested in Open Educational Resources by now. With the cooperation with aim to enhance the conditions for OER in Germany. The funding enables us to make the conference even bigger than in 2013 and we are planning to have up to 500 participants this year. Like in 2013 the event will consist of a curated part as well as a BarCamp where the participants can develop content themselves. The sign-up form can be found here (German only).
Wikimedia Sverige: Meeting the educators
Educators attending the two day conference Framtidens Lärande, took part in a series of six bite size seminars on how to use a wide range of projects with their students, such as Wikimini for K-10, and how to share flipped classroom resources on Wikimedia Commons.
The Department of Computer and Systems Science at Stockholm University is running an advanced international training program, called ICT and Pedagogical Development, supported by Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency), where Wikimedia Sverige is invited to introduce the Wikimedia projects, including how Wikiversity can be used as a platform for the shared knowledge and resources in this global project.
Articles of interest in other publications
- Wikipedia Education programs of Wikimedia Armenia
Educational programs are one of the primary programs being addressed by Wikimedia Armenia. To date, they have been implemented in seven high schools and select departments at various universities. Contrary to what we see in other countries, today, the most active contributors within Wikimedia Armenia are high school students, who, to date, have created more than 2,110 articles and continue their active participation well passed their assigned courses. Read the full post on the Wikimedia blog. More files in Wikimedia Commons
- Wikipedia Education Program students keep editing in Arabic long after their assignments are finished
Looking back at February 2014, Wikipedia Education Program alumni from Egypt, Jordan and Algeria accounted for 3.6% of the active editors and 8.2% of the very active editors on Arabic Wikipedia. Overall, the program in the Arab world has seen some interesting retention numbers, close to 6% of former program participants edited that month. While our theory of change and goal for the program remains focused on quality content, not editors, it is nice to see that we are having an effect in the growth of Arab Wikipedia. Read the full post on the Wikimedia blog.
- Adrianne Wadewitz, 37, Wikipedia Editor, Dies in Rock Climbing Fall
Noam Cohen of The New York Times writes this tribute to the life of academician and Wikipedian Adrianne Wadewitz. Read the full story in The New York Times
- Berkeley’s Wikipedian helps unlock scholarly silos
Kevin Gorman was appointed as the first Wikipedian-in-residence for the University of California, Berkeley to help students publish academic information in Wikipedia. In this article, Kevin discuss the importance of having students collaborate online to help complete the encyclopedia. Read the full story in the Times Higher Education
- Wikipedia editing for university library internships
In the final term of 2013, the University of Pittsburgh libraries ran a Wikipedia-focused internship course for two undergraduates majoring in history. The head of the archives and one of the student have now published a paper about the project: "Increasing the Discoverability of Digital Collections Using Wikipedia: The Pitt Experience".
- A call for historians of science to use Wikipedia in the classroom
In an article for the most recent issue of the History of Science Society's newsletter, Sage Ross highlights the opportunity for history of science professors to get involved with Wikipedia classroom assignments. Read the article.
- Using Wikipedia in the classroom a cautionary tale (Updatedx2)
This is a blog post by Meghan Duffy, a professor who contributed this article to the Dynamic Ecology blog. Here she writes about a negative experience by one of her students working in Wikipedia, basically having her well-referenced and well-developed rewrite of an article reverted by a Wikipedian repeatedly. The comments, many by the en.wiki community, are worth reading as well.