Education/Government Partnerships

There are Wikipedia Education Programs in more than 80 countries worldwide. Some programs collaborate and coordinate with local and national government institutions. Some government partnerships have been formalized with agreements and others are still in preliminary stages. We list these partnerships here.

Portal

Home

About

Resources

Community

News

Greenhouse

Events and Opportunities

Countries

This "What is Wikipedia?" video, in Spanish with subtitles in multiple languages, was featured on the Argentinian Ministry of Education website.

The Armenian President, the Minister of Culture, and the Minister of Education and Science talk with Wikimedia representatives meet in Yerevan.

Partnership between Wikimedia Israel, Wikimedia Foundation, and Israel's Ministry of Education.

Teachers at the WMIL/Ministry of Education conference in Israel.

Teachers receiving their participation certificates at the Instituto de Profesores Artigas in Uruguay.

WMPH, WMF, Smart Communications, and teachers in the Philippines.

No education and government partnership can succeed without strong Wikipedians, like these great guys from Wikimedia Philippines.

Even with the best of intentions, and a great team, some partnerships do not produce much impact, like the one in Estonia.

When partnerships work well, they can be powerful connectors of communities and catalysts of change. They can also be a lot of fun.

Albania

In Albania, the Wikipedia Education Program partners with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture. The Ministry of Education can provide easy access in Schools and Universities. The Ministry of Culture can promote Wiki Loves Monuments and provide the necessary materials of cultural heritage and monuments in Albania. And the involvement of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture in the project gives assurance about the sustainability of the project

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Albania here.

Argentina

Wikimedia Argentina (WMAR) signed an agreement with the Buenos Aires Ministry of Education. It is the largest province in Argentina and therefore has the biggest educational community of the country. The aim is to disseminate Wikipedia in the classroom all around the province.

WMAR hosted workshops with teachers from the Ministry of Education of the City of Buenos Aires, who assisted in updating the booklet "Wikipedia en el Aula" (or Wikipedia in the Classroom). The booklet was then issued officially by the national Ministry of Education.

The Ministry of Education of the City of Buenos Aires published WMAR's instructional videos on their website, which got them 3,500,000 hits per month.

WMAR's Wikipedia en el aula project impacted Argentinian public policy. The national Ministry of Education Office for ICTs in Education developed a companion website called "Wikipedia en el Aula", which includes WMAR's booklet in .pdf format along with other contributions from relevant education experts and scholars in Argentina. This helps increase the credibility of the chapter and promotes its initiatives right from the educational authorities at the national level.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Argentina here.

Armenia

In June 2015, Wikimedia Armenia's new chapter office in Yerevan officially opened with a grand ceremony. The President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, the Minister of Culture Hasmik Poghosyan, and the Minister of Education and Science Armen Ashotyan all attended. Benefactor and Intellectual Renaissance founder Artur Janibekyan, with whom WM AM cooperates, attended as well. Also in attendance were representatives from the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia movement: Jan-Bart de Vreede (Chair of the Board of Trustees), Asaf Bartov (Senior Program Officer, Emerging Wikimedia Communities), Anna Koval (Manager, Wikipedia Education Program), and Liam Wyatt (GLAMwiki Coordinator, Europeana).

The following core issues were discussed in the meeting:

• To include the study of wiki editing tools in the national school curriculum. Similar programs have been successfully implemented in such countries education curriculum as Israel, Serbia and France. The possibility to make a similar program work in Armenia. Options and obstacles. The ways to solve existing problems.
• Discussions concerning possible changes in the Copyright and Related rights law of Armenia, in particular, in terms of protection of economic rights of the author (Article 37).
• Wider cooperation within the GLAMwiki program (cooperation with galleries, libraries, archives, and museums), which aims at digitizing scientific-cultural heritage, its preservation, and expansion and translation into other languages.

All of these issues are very important and a possibility was created to raise them at the governmental level, which would enable Wikimedia editors to add more content to the Wikimedia projects, as well as will help involve more editors and volunteers in the wiki movement, and enlarge the scope of Wikimedia Armenia's cooperation with educational, cultural, and scientific institutions nationwide.

This event was widely covered in the Armenian media. It was also covered by Armenian Public Television, Armenia TV, ATV and many other TV channels. It was also reported in the Wikipedia Education Program newsletter.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Armenia here.

Belgium

In Belgium, the Walloon government (or de la Région wallonne) sponsors a program called "Digital Schools," which is part of its new plan for ICT education service («Ecole numérique – Un nouveau plan TIC au service de l’éducation»). One of Wikimedia Belgium's education program initiatives is at the Institut Sainte Marie Châtelet. This project is called Web 2.0 Education à la Citoyenne-Tic and it was one of the winners of the government's Digital School program. Read more about this ICT Citizen project on French Wikipedia and more details on French Wikipedia.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Belgium here.

Botswana

Wikimedia Botswana was planning to undertake a project involving collaboration with the Ministry of Education and with various schools and the Division of the Botswana National Museums. The aims of the project were: to develop and expand several outreach programs and services for primary schools around the country, to encourage students to edit and write educational articles on Wikipedia about GLAM Institutions, and to increase student participation on Wikipedia Projects. The project needed more community members to liaise with Ministry of Education and to run this project in schools.

Catalonia

In Catalonia, there are partnerships with local autonomous government of the Balearic Islands (Govern de les Illes Balears) and the general manager of educational innovation and teacher training. The aim of this partnership is to combine the richness of the many educational systems and the diversity of languages in which many students attend their lessons across the Catalan-speaking territories.

One project called Viquilletra (or Wikiletter), which developed Wikipedia articles about Catalan literature, was a collaboration among Amical Viquipèdia, the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), and the Education Department (Departament d'Ensenyament). The teachers from the ESO (Secundaria Obligatoria, or compulsory secondary education) also worked on Catalan literature by topics. This pilot was to be piloted in ten educational centers.

Another project called Viquibalear was a multilingual educational project and regional article writing competition for secondary school students. The Department of Pedagogical Innovation confirmed economic support of 4.000€ for the 2010-2011 academic year to implement the project in schools.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Catalonia here.

Chile

 coming soon!

Estonia

Wikimedia Eesti in Estonia has forged a cooperation with the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research. Since 2013, there were discussions with the Ministry about their possible support for piloting a large scope project to introduce Wikipedia in secondary schools of Estonia.

In December 2013, the project "Wikipedization of Research Writings of Secondary School Students" kicked off. The project included paid staff for training (1 FTE) and for coordination activities (0.5 FTE), totaling 1.5 FTE. Although contacts were established with 12 schools, only 6 of them participated in the project.

All together, 93 students and 20 teachers participated in Wikipedia lectures and workshops in schools. A total of 41 students wrote at least 1 article on Estonian Wikipedia during the workshop. The goal of the project was not achieved, as only 6 secondary school students engaged in Wikipedization of their research writings.

A total of 19 articles were created and 11 significantly improved, based on the research writings of students, which equals 101,341 bytes added to Wikipedia. The project was motivated by a desire to develop the writing skills of high school students in short, to improve the awareness of the Wikipedia project, and to make visible to the public high school students doing research.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Estonia here.

France

In October 2014, the French Ministry of Education recognized Wikimedia France as an educational partner in public education. This agreement was issued for a period of 5 years.

The entity which granted this approval is called the General Directorate of School Education (la direction générale de l'enseignement scolaire or DGESCO).

Their mission includes the updating of school education programs for teachers and students. In practical terms, this agreement improves the visibility of Wikimedia France as an educational institutional and validates Wikimedia projects. This partnership is an opportunity to raise awareness among the people who make decisions about education in France since they apply the national directives issued by the Ministry of Education.

WMFR showed them the possibilities offered by the use of Wikimedia projects to construct educational scenarios. Read more about this partnership in English and in French.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in France here.

Germany

Wikimedia Deutschland's Mapping OER program is a nationwide pilot project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research aimed to identify the challenges of OER in practice and to present ideas on how to implement OER broadly into the German education system.

There are four central topics: quality assurance, qualification, licensing, and business models. To address these matters, they chose a multi-stakeholder approach, involving politicians, teachers, administration, content producers and publishers. Otherwise there was a risk of ending up with results and ideas that were not feasible for education or legal practices or which did not support the everyday work of users.

Meanwhile, Wikimedia Deutschland and other non-governmental organizations created a Coalition of Open Education to allow for the strategic positioning and collaborative writing of statements and political position papers about OER.

Read more about Wikimedia Deutschland's Mapping OER Program here.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Germany here.

India

 coming soon!

https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Countries/India/IT_@_School Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in India here.

Israel

In June 2014, an agreement was reached between the Israeli Ministry of Education, Wikimedia Israel (WMIL), and the Wikimedia Foundation. This agreement changed Israel's national educational curricula. Teachers and students now must learn how to contribute to new or incomplete Wikipedia articles about academic topics for which information is lacking or inadequate, including history, geography, and science.

The incorporation of reading and writing Wikipedia articles as part of Israel’s “Meaningful Learning” program (at education.gov.il, in Hebrew) is aimed at equipping students with knowledge and skills relevant to the 21st century.

This resolution represents a significant step for Wikimedia Israel but is not without its challenges. Developing a national plan for hundreds of teachers and thousands of students is a complicated undertaking, facing issues such as scale, article quality and coordination with the community. Internal disagreements within the Ministry slowed down activities with gifted students and required that WMIL's ED deal with internal politics in the Ministry.

This was a time-consuming endeavor, which will hopefully not further impede the chapter’s activities with teachers and students.

The positive attitude of the Ministry of Education to Wikipedia as a useful teaching tool, and its allocation of resources to promote the use of Wikipedia among teachers, contributes greatly to the positive image of Wikipedia among educators and the general public. This agreement was the first systematic collaboration between an education system and the Wikimedia movement.

Additionally, in March 2015, Wikimedia Israel, the Israeli Ministry of Education, and the Center for Educational Technology organized an educators' conference dealing with educational use of Wikipedia. The conference was the conclusion to the first round of teachers' online courses about the use of Wikipedia in the classroom. The course was co-developed by the three organizing bodies. About 100 teachers participated in the course along with senior officials from the Israeli Ministry of Education, WMIL representatives and the Hebrew Wikipedia community.

Read more about the partnership in the Wikimedia blog and in the education newsletter. There is additional media coverage elsewhere in the newsletter. Read more about the teacher training in the education newsletter.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Israel.

Macedonia

 coming soon!

Philippines

Wikimedia Philippines collaborated with Smart Communications, the local provider of Wikipedia Zero, and the Department of Education (or DepEd).

The three joined forces for the "Tap and Learn: Tablets for Education" Training Roadshow. It was an outreach program for public school teachers to introduce the use of tablets for classroom education. During this project, Filipino Wikipedia editors trained educators from public elementary and secondary schools across the country about using Wikipedia to enhance the learning experience of students.

The training will also be useful for the educators' professional development.To learn about this program, please review the Tap & Learn Training Roadshow Activity Reports on the WMPH wiki.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Philippines here.

Poland

 coming soon!

Senegal

 coming soon!

Serbia

In September 2014, the Serbian Ministry of Education prescribed that all students in the second year of secondary school curriculum must study wiki tools. Following that, Serbia's Institute for the Advancement of Education (Завод за унапређивање образовања и васпитања) included a course on Wikipedia in its catalog of accredited programs for continuous professional development of teachers, professors and other school personnel. This accreditation lasts for two years: the 2014/15 and 2015/16 academic years. The first course was to be offered beginning in December 2014.

Wikimedia Serbia hosted numerous meetings, discussions and consultations with several partners led to the creation of the course “Usage of Wikipedia in teaching and learning”. It took eight months of waiting and several levels of evaluation in order to receive accreditation. Over the next two years, teachers, staff and school administrators will have the opportunity to attend these courses. According to the catalog criteria, the course carries 8 points and takes the same number of hours to complete. It is designed for all categories but its priority area is ​strengthening the professional capacity of staff, particularly in the area of ​​innovative teaching approach and methods.

There are a number of aims of this project. Familiarizing teachers with the rules and procedures to use the content on the Internet: openness, availability, licensing of content on the Internet, respect for intellectual property. Training teachers to connect and organize teaching contents of one or more objects in thematic units using wiki tools. Training teachers to find, use and enrichment of the content on the Internet using new technology. Applying new technologies in the learning process through the use of wiki tools.

Wikimedia Serbia and the Academic Board of the Wikimedia Serbia are working hard on the preparation of teaching for its first participants.

WMRS believes that this course is a major step forward in the development of their educational programs because training teachers enables them to train their students and to increase the general knowledge of Wikipedia and its possibilities among the student population in Serbia.

Read more about the accredited teacher education course in the education newsletter.

So far, 6 seminars have been held in 3 cities in Serbia. Review of the seminars can be seen in a YouTube video Wiki EDU Collab "Highlight of the Month".

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Serbia.

Spain

 coming soon!

Sweden

 coming soon! ... the Swedish National Agency for Education ...

Ukraine

 coming soon!

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/12/23/community-digest-wikipedia-education-ukraine/

United Kingdom

Wikimedia UK is working with Jisc. Jisc, or the Joint Information Systems Committee, is a registered charity, focusing on the use of digital technologies in UK education and research. The partnership encourages a range of audiences (librarians, teachers, researchers and students) within learning and research to engage with Wikimedia UK and Wikimedia projects for mutual benefit. This links Wikimedia, research impact, and open education. Read more about this partnership in the education newsletter.

Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in United Kingdom here.

Uruguay

Wikimedia Uruguay's Wikipedia Education Program is partnering with CFE and CEIBAL to developing a project on the subject Wikipedia in Education. CFE is the Consejo de Formación en Educación — the Board of Education — and CEIBAL is the socio-educational portal of Plan Ceibal (a gateway to hundreds of learning objects).

Uruguay has 32 teacher training institutes which are CFE-dependent, along with a total of 2,671 teachers, and 20,391 students. These institutes train all teachers in primary and secondary education in Uruguay.

Involving teacher training students in activities conducted in conjunction with teacher educators in reflection on the educational uses of Wikipedia will stimulate the use of Wikipedia in the processes of teaching and learning. The aim is to provide the theoretical, methodological and technical training, aimed at fostering the development of skills for use on Wikipedia, and by its use, critical reading and editing, and creating free educational content in collaborative workspaces using wiki technology.

Read more about this project on the Wikimedia blog, in the grant proposal, and in the education newsletter. Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Uruguay here.

See also

The Wikimedia Foundation's Learning & Evaluation Team has written a learning pattern about partnerships with ministries of education. It looks at the issue through a problem/solution lens.