Education/Newsletter/May 2014/Wikimedia Deutschland: Summary of activities in April 2014

Wikimedia Deutschland: Summary of activities in April 2014

By Christopher Schwarzkopf


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

Screencast of the interactive exhibit onboard of the MS Science, Video by Jens Ohlig, CC-BY-SA 3.0

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).