Education/Newsletter/August 2015/Single
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Snippet: The benefits of the Education Program broadcasted on Swedish National Radio.
The National Radio of Sweden broke the news earlier this month that Wikimedia Sweden has received government grants to support the work on increasing gender diversity on Wikipedia. The morning program broadcasted a seven minute interview with Gunnel Thydell, a Wikipedian and one of the participating teachers in the Wikipedia Education Program in Sweden, and Irene Andersson, a historian from Malmö University. Their conversation centered around the role of education to cover content gaps and also as a way to bring diversity to the Wikipedia editing community. Listeners nationwide were also introduced to Wikipedia as a teaching tool as it was praised for bringing many much needed benefits to education in terms of innovative assignments and alternative assessments.
Listen to the 7 minute interview (in Swedish)
Read more about Wikipedia Education Program in Sweden here.
By Leigh Thelmadatter (Wiki Learning-Tec de Monterrey)
Snippet: Videos, wikimetrics and new projects at the Tec de Monterrey.
Summer 2015 may be seen in the future as a turning point for Wiki efforts at Tec de Monterrey in Mexico. It came off of a successful Spring semester, which saw the first "Wiki challenge" on three campuses of the institution as well as the start of an ambitious project to create a short video documentary/testimonial about Wiki projects at the institution by high school students under the direction of Daniel Ulacia. So ambitious, in fact, that the students could not finish, so a group of Digital Art and Animation students under the leadership of Naomi Iwadare, took over with Daniel to finish the almost 9-minute video in time for the 2015 Wikimania in Mexico City. The video, presented by Daniel, was a hit and has since been shared all over social media, presented at the Lightning talks at the Foundation in San Francisco and formally to teachers' meetings and to classes starting Wikimedia projects as a form of introduction. The video was also formally presented at the Mexico City campus at a ceremony to award certificates of appreciation from both the Tec de Monterrey and the Wikipedia Education Program on August 27, 2015. Watch the video here (in Spanish with English subtitles). The university level students who worked on this video did not stop there. They also created a tutorial for uploading files to Commons, with the aim of supporting the Wiki challenge of September 2015. This video contains not only screenshots showing the steps of uploading a photograph, but its introduction contains original animations to present the basic rules and norms for uploading in Commons. This video can be seen here (no subtitles).
Spring 2015 saw the most content ever uploaded to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons by Tec de Monterrey students. Summer, of course, is quieter, as there are very few classes. However, we still had a group of 20 students working with Wikipedia to fulfill community service requirements. Six of these did the video work mentioned above. The rest worked mostly on articles, both translation and writing, with some photography. Our wikimetrics for May-August are:
- 19 participants of servicio social
- 3,703,182 bytes added to Spanish Wikipedia
- 1,045 edits in namespace only
- 81 articles created or significantly expanded
The Fall semester began on August 10, with new classes and new projects. Classes in advanced English, Spanish composition and Mexican culture have already started work on Wikimedia projects. A new group of 20 students are working in Wikiservicio for their community service hours. In addition, the Popular Art Museum of Mexico City has signed on with the Mexico City campus and Wikiservicio to sponsor the video group from above. In this pilot project, these students will be working on video and animation related to the museum, but to be put in a free license, making it useful to Wikimedia as well. The communications director is already impressed with these students' commitment and drive. September 21-25 is Tec de Monterrey's Semana i (I Week) a week when students do not go to classes, but instead spend 40+ hours on a single project, to be started and completed in that time. The Wiki option this semester at the Mexico City campus will be a Wiki Expedition to cover as much of the Mexico City boroughs of Xochimilco and Tlalpan as possible photographically, focusing on historical monuments, other landmarks, parks, waterways and daily life in these areas adjacent to this campus. We are collaborating with the National Institute of Anthropology and History as well as the governments of the boroughs for access and for documentation. While the focus of the week will be photography, we also aim to encourage classes to work on missing short articles after the event. Campus Santa Fe, in the west of the city, is also doing a Wiki expedition, with their focus on the San Ángel neighborhood near their campus.
Read more about Wikipedia Education Program in Tec De Monterrey here.
By Anna Koval (WMF) - Samir Elsharbaty (WMF)
Snippet: This Month In Education is turning 3. On this occasion, we are proposing changes to the publication process and frequency.
This Month In Education is the monthly education newsletter of the Wikimedia movement. It has been written by the community and published every month since August 2012.
This Month In Education began three years ago, when Leigh Thelmadatter, an Education Program Leader in Mexico, first had the idea of a community-led education newsletter and spearheaded this volunteer effort. In May 2014, Anna Koval began working with Leigh to help grow the publication. Together they added several new features, including a subscribe by email option, single-page edition, and a Signpost-style article layout for the News page. In June 2014, they reported that these changes had resulted in new subscriptions, a significant increase in pageviews, and more submissions than any issue to date. The June 2014 issue featured 21 articles from 13 programs from around the world.
In November 2014, Samir Elsharbaty joined the Wikimedia Foundation’s education team as a Communications Intern and stepped in to publish the newsletter. Since then, many volunteers in the Wikipedia Education Program have participated in the newsletter, submitting stories and writing articles every month. We have enjoyed working closely with all of them. Their contributions have grown the newsletter's audience very quickly. Thanks to the combined efforts of Leigh, Anna and Samir, we feel the newsletter is now in a good place to be community-owned once more, and we wish to invite community members to join the newsletter publication team and participate in the publishing process.
The publication process is not difficult, though it can be time-consuming if only one person is responsible for all of the various steps, including writing, illustrating, copyediting, creating three different versions of each issue, distributing the newsletter to talk pages, archiving, etc. These steps have been documented on the newsroom's talk page, and there is a checklist to ensure that no step is skipped.
Because of the amount of work that is involved each month, we propose to modify the frequency of publication from monthly to quarterly from now on. This will be more efficient for everyone: publishers, authors, and readers. And this is in keeping with the frequency of other movement communication methods, for example, the L&E newsletter Evaluation Quarterly. If there is consensus for this change, a new name for the education newsletter might be appropriate, for example, Wikimedia Education Quarterly.
We welcome your thoughts about the proposal to make this a quarterly newsletter, as well as other ideas about the newsletter publication process. Please comment here on the talk page. You can help share your useful experiences by getting involved and joining the newsletter publication team. Please answer the call for volunteers here on the talk page.
This Month In Education now reaches more people and speaks for more programs than ever before. Hundreds of readers wait for the newsletter every month. We continue to think that is a really good thing! :)
Snippet: This Month in Education is inviting the Wikipedia and the education communities to participate in the newsletter publication.
This Month in Education is inviting the community to help the newsletter get published every three months. In order to do this, we need the help of three community members. Each one of them will volunteer 1-2 days every three months working on the newsletter. We will be sure to provide the needed training, support and recognition for the new volunteers. Please read the description of every task below to find the most suitable role for you.
- Content leader
The content leader will watch the newsroom, help edit and review posts added by other community members, write posts, encourage program leaders to write about their experiences, and collect Wikipedia in education news from the media. The new volunteer will make sure the newsletter content is ready two weeks before the publication date. This may require volunteering for 3-5 hours every month and the volunteer should have good writing skills.
- Publication leader
The publication leader will be responsible for creating the pages for every new issue of the newsletter. This volunteer will move the content prepared by the community to the new issue pages and make sure it is in the right formatting before publication. This may require volunteering 1 day every three months. The publication leader will start their work every time after getting a notification from the content leader that the content is ready to make sure the newsletter is published in time. This volunteer should have good experience with editing Wikimedia projects.
- Distribution leader
The distribution leader will be responsible for delivering the published new issue of the newsletter to subscribers on talk pages, email addresses, mailing lists and social media. This may require volunteering 1 day every three months. The distribution leader will start their work after getting a notification from the Publication leader that the newsletter is published. This volunteer should have good experience with editing Wikimedia projects.
Please help the education newsletter by sharing this call for volunteers to anyone who might be interested in volunteering for the newsletter.
Show your interest in joining This Month In Education here.
Reforma newspaper of Mexico City overviews education efforts with Wikipedia in Mexico
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"If you cant beat them, join them" says Reforma, one of Mexico City's most important newspaper in its "Universitarios" education supplement, with a six-page featured article on August 23, 2015, referring to Wikipedia in education. Supplement director Ana Belén Negrete attended the 2015 Wikimania in Mexico City and was impressed enough with what she saw to feature it in the August edition, dedicated to back-to-school.
The article begins with an overview of Wikimedia and the struggle to get Wikipedia accepted by academia in the country, then goes into efforts to develop programs and activities by Wikimedia México with institutions such as the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Quoting Senior Manager for the Wikipedia Education Program Floor Koudijs, details about efforts at UNAM and Tec de Monterrey are discussed. At UNAM, most activities are with the school's Facultad de Filosofia y Letras (Humanities Division). For Tec de Monterrey, the article discusses its various activities, such as students writing and translation articles for classes, "servicio social" (community service hours required of all Mexican undergraduates) and more. It also goes into the creation of major video projects by animation students (three of whom are prominently pictured in the article), as well as the Wiki Expedition to Tepoztlán in March 2015 and the upcoming Wiki Expedition to the Mexico City boroughs of Xochimilco and Tlalpan.
The article then goes into a general overview of Wikimedia, especially in relation to education, mentioning other Mexican universities as well as the education programs in Armenia, Argentina, Uruguay, Egypt, Spain and Chile. The article ends with various statistics about article usage, readership, articles written by students in Mexico, along with tips for using Wikipedia more effectively.
Unfortunately, the article is available now only behind a paywall, but a request has been made to make all or part of it available on Wikimedia Commons.
Writing articles about women on Wikipedia instead of university tests
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In Israel, Dr. Sharon Geva, professor of history assigned her students to edit a Wikipedia article about one of the notable women in the history of Israel instead of taking a normal exam. There are several important women who made the history of Israel however they are not well-known outside their families. Dr. Geva has prepared a list of 65 women with great achievements from which students can choose the topic of their entries. The historian professor wanted to reflect what students study and discuss in class into something everyone can benefit from.
WikiD writing workshop engraves women into architecture history on Wikipedia
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The Women Wikipedia Design (WikiD project), is an international education and advocacy program working to increase the number of Wikipedia articles on women in architecture and the built environment. As part of the project, Monash University and Parlour are organizing the first WikiD editing workshop in Australia on Sunday September 13 from 11:30 PM to 4:00 PM at The Monash Art Design and Architecture (MADA) faculty.